This book advances the thesis that memorials are fundamentally rhetorical and cultural forms of expression, that a careful examination of American memorializing discloses the contours of at least three distinct American cultures, and that shifting visual and discursive memorial patterns across time reveal the ascendancy and subordination of these three cultures and their cultural memories.

It unveils a mode of human expression that embodies the ethoi and worldviews of divergent American cultures - each of which has possessed and continues to seek to possess America's hegemonic voice and to become (or remain) the custodian of America's collective memory.