“Memorial Mania is an important and much-needed book, one that complements the existing literature on memorials with richness and originality, and also forges new territory. Doss’s excellent and highly polemical critique of its resurgence furthers one of American studies’ most noteworthy traditions.”

Michelle Bogart, Stony Brook University

"Memorials carry enormous emotional and symbolic freight, providing clues as to how people feel about their society. This is the subject of Erika Doss’s scholarly and readable book, Memorial Mania. . . . I believe Memorial Mania will appeal to a wide audience—both inside and outside academia—given the quality of the writing and the presentation of the material. The book is packed with information and insight as it documents the growing phenomenon of memorialization in America; and 160 illustrations can only enhance the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the subject. . . . It is a sign of the quality of Doss’ work that I am left wanting more." —Anthropology Works

Anthropology Works

“With its contemporary focus and astonishingly wide range of examples, Erika Doss’s Memorial Mania…considers not simply how commemorative practices reflect the feelings of Americans, but also how commemoration has become a crucial medium through which public feeling is structured, expressed, and archived. . . . What makes Doss’s book so valuable is that it reveals the range, complexity, and depth of emotion produced by memorial acts.”

American Quarterly

“Prodigiously researched, generously illustrated. . . . Readers will come away having learned a good deal about contemporary commemoration and possessing a new awareness of the value and interest of the study of public affect.”

Journal of American History