000			04320cam a22004218i 4500
001			on1292925057
003			OCoLC
005			20220412141335.0
008			220120s2022 nyuab b 001 0 eng
010			_a 2021055729
040			_aDLC _beng _erda _cDLC _dORX _dOCLCO _dYDX _dBDX _dOCLCF _dOCLCO _dIHV _dOCLCO _dVP@ _dNFG
019			_a1259049136
020			_a9781982116750 _q(hardcover)
020			_a1982116757 _q(hardcover)
020			_a9781982116767 _q(paperback)
020			_a1982116765 _q(paperback)
035			_a(OCoLC)1292925057 _z(OCoLC)1259049136
042			_apcc
092			_a973 _bP978
049			_aNFGA
100	1		_aPuglionesi, Alicia, _eauthor.
245	1	0	_aIn whose ruins : _bpower, possession, and the landscapes of American empire / _cAlicia Puglionesi.
250			_aFirst Scribner hardcover edition.
263			_a2204
264		1	_aNew York : _bScribner, _c2022.
300			_aviii, 354 pages : _billustrations, maps ; _c22 cm
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_aunmediated _bn _2rdamedia
338			_avolume _bnc _2rdacarrier
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 301-332) and index.
520			_a"In this examination of landscape and memory, four sites of American history are revealed as places where historical truth was written over by oppressive fiction-with profound repercussions for politics past and present. Popular narratives of American history conceal as much as they reveal. They present a national identity based on harvesting the treasures that lay in wait for European colonization. In Whose Ruins tells another story: winding through the US landscape, from Native American earthworks in West Virginia to the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, this history is a tour of sites that were mined for an empire's power. Showing the hidden costs of ruthless economic growth, particularly to Indigenous people and ways of understanding, this book illuminates the myth-making intimately tied to place. From the ground up, the project of settlement, expansion, and extraction became entwined with the spiritual values of those who hoped to gain from it. Every nation tells some stories and suppresses others, and In Whose Ruins illustrates the way American myths have been inscribed on the earth itself, overwriting Indigenous histories and binding us into an unsustainable future. In these pages, historian Alicia Puglionesi illuminates the story of the Grave Creek Stone, "discovered" in an ancient Indigenous burial mound, and used to promote the theory that a lost white race predated Native people in North America-part of a wider effort to justify European conquest with alternative histories. When oil was discovered in the corner of western Pennsylvania soon known as Petrolia, prospectors framed that treasure, too, as a birthright passed to them, through Native guides, from a lost race. Puglionesi traces the fate of ancient petroglyphs that once adorned rock faces on the Susquehanna River, dynamited into pieces to make way for a hydroelectric dam. This act foreshadowed the flooding of Native lands around the country; over the course of the 20th century, almost every major river was dammed for economic purposes. And she explores the effects of the US nuclear program in the Southwest, which contaminated vast regions in the name of eternal wealth and security through atomic power. This promise rang hollow for the surrounding Native, Hispanic, and white communities that were harmed, and even for some scientists. It also inspired nationwide resistance, uniting diverse groups behind a different vision of the future-one not driven by greed and haunted by ruin. This deeply researched work of narrative history traces the roots of American fantasies and fears in a national tradition of selective forgetting. Connecting the power of myths with the extraction of power from the land itself reveals the truths that have been left out and is an invaluable torch in the search for a way forward"-- _cProvided by publisher.
651		0	_aUnited States _xHistoriography. _9229445
650		0	_aHistoric sites _zUnited States. _924185
650		0	_aMemory _xSocial aspects _zUnited States. _9116621
650		0	_aMyth _xSocial aspects _zUnited States.
650		0	_aNational characteristics, American. _921875
994			_aC0 _bNFG
999			_c345766 _d345766