Karen L. Cox does a lovely job with this book. Confederate monuments are such a heated topic right now, and Cox excellently breaks down why yes, they ARE racist with ties to white supremacy as well as the white supremacist excuses that are behind wanting to leave them up. Public historians in American history, particularly at sites with painful narratives surrounding slavery, need to read this, and I hope to see more of my peers talking about it. Highly recommend!

No Common Ground by Karen L. Cox is the definitive history of Confederate monuments and their surrounding controversies. Cox traces the origins of these monuments, which aim to preserve Confederate power, white supremacy, and the “lost cause” narrative. She builds from their origins through the present, as diverse activists mobilize to resist the “lost cause” myth and its monuments. No Common Ground offers a masterful public-history analysis. Cox unpacks the motives and stories behind these public displays of a violent historical narrative with a focus on its intended audiences. Confederate monuments idolize a fictitious antebellum utopia and inflict white supremacist terror. Cox adds that related studies in other disciplines such as sociology, as well as microhistories of individual monuments, ought to build on her scholarship.