Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine [Hardcover]

Jim Weeks (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691102716 | ISBN-13: 978-0691102719 | Publication Date: April 7, 2003

The site of North America's greatest battle is a national icon, a byword for the Civil War, and an American cliché. Described as "the most American place in America," Gettysburg is defended against commercial desecration like no other historic site. Yet even as schoolchildren learn to revere the place where Lincoln delivered his most famous speech, Gettysburg's image generates millions of dollars every year from touring, souvenirs, reenactments, films, games, collecting, and the Internet. Examining Gettysburg's place in American culture, this book finds that the selling of Gettysburg is older than the shrine itself.

Gettysburg entered the market not with recent interest in the Civil War nor even with twentieth-century tourism but immediately after the battle. Founded by a modern industrial society with the capacity to deliver uniform images to millions, Gettysburg, from the very beginning, reflected the nation's marketing trends as much as its patriotism. Gettysburg's pilgrims--be they veterans, families on vacation, or Civil War reenactors--have always been modern consumers escaping from the world of work and responsibility even as they commemorate. And it is precisely this commodification of sacred ground, this tension between commerce and commemoration, that animates Gettysburg's popularity.

Gettysburg continues to be a current rather than a past event, a site that reveals more about ourselves as Americans than the battle it remembers. Gettysburg is, as it has been since its famous battle, both a cash cow and a revered symbol of our most deeply held values.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A book of rare intelligence and eloquence. -- Library Journal

Thoughtfully written, well illustrated with contemporary imagery, and meticulously documented, this volume makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the utility of the past. -- Choice

The story told here is a multifaceted one. Most obviously it offers a fresh perspective on the contested memory of the Civil War. It is no less important as a window on the social history of leisure and tourism. -- Adam Smith, History Today

Weeks makes a convincing case that Gettysburg owes its special status to the marketplace. Nationalists might not like to hear it, but the shrine that prompts so much flag waving and solemn devotion is also a major moneymaker. -- Damon W. Root, Reason

As both hallowed shrine and theme park, Gettysburg paradoxically offers Americans a sacred haven from our obsessive commercialism and an exciting marketplace experience. How local promoters began this process almost as soon as the shooting stopped, and how even today's park purists maintain this subtle, clever masking, make Weeks' Gettysburg an absorbing venture in cultural history. -- Blue & Gray Magazine

[This] work not only fills a long-unaddressed gap in Gettysburg's vast historiography but also provides a noteworthy contribution to the larger debate over battlefield preservation and interpretation. -- Joseph Pierro, Civil War History

From the Inside Flap

"Looking at succeeding generations of tourists and pilgrims to the site--the genteel, the veterans, the masses, and finally the reenactors--Weeks gives us a lively, engaging, argumentative, and very well-written analysis of the commercial uses made of Gettysburg since before the bones were buried until the present day."--Michael Fellman, author of The Making of Robert E. Lee and Citizen Sherman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (April 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691102716
• ISBN-13: 978-0691102719
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,683,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Praise From a Gettysburg Native!, June 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine (Hardcover)

This is an excellent volume; the introduction alone is
practically worth the price of the book. It is an accurate and
unflinching look at the town of Gettysburg and its history and
development since the battle. It will probably be unpopular
with the faction who prefer their history sugarcoated and
uncritical, but for those who seek the real history, this is it.
For many, Gettysburg has become a shrine to be revered, a
veritable home of saints and holy relics. This book looks at the complete picture, "warts and all," and it will especially
resonate with the "baby boomer" generation who came of age in the 1950's and 1960's. An excellent study and a fine
addition to the Gettysburg canon!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could have been a great one..., March 2, 2010

By 

Buck Hummer (Selinsgrove, Pa. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine (Hardcover)

I really looked forward to getting this book; I have a keen interest in all things Gettysburg; the battle itself, the aftermath, the monuments, and the history of the battlefield and the park. Having just finished reading it, I have some mixed opinions about it.

On the plus side the material is extremely well researched...exhaustive, in fact. Weeks has an abundance of knowledge about the subject and introduces many hidden little gems of information that would be of interest to anyone who has visited Gettysburg and is fascinated in the history of the park and the town, and the commercial aspects of its history.

As for the negative impressions... it is obvious that the author is an extremely intelligent fellow with quite an extensive vocabulary.... and unfortunately he cannot resist the urge to display it at every turn, to the detriment of the subject at hand. While reading this book, I kept wondering if it was written to inform or to impress.

It would appear in the first section of the book as if the author receives a royalty for each use of the term "genteel"; it is used so frequently and with such abandon as to become almost farcical. Ditto with terms such as "quotidian", "insouciance" and endless variations of the word "edify". After awhile, the semantic gymnastics become simply annoying and tedious. Think of the singer who feels compelled to "interpret" the Star Spangled Banner with vocal histrionics as opposed to just singing the song, and you get an idea of the author's writing style.

Equally grating throughout is the author's inclination to make highly judgmental conclusions about the varied tourists over the years, their yearning for "moral uplift", etc. It is as though we are reading an anthropological treatise. Tourists visiting the park in cars become "automobilists", groups of visitors to the town and park become members of various "tribes". His subjective pronouncements about those visiting the town and the battlefield (particularly the re-enactors) become so infuriating that there were more than a few times that I needed to fight off the urge to hurl the book across the room.

This book has its merits...and could have been a terrific book, maybe even the definitive work on the subject, if only the author could get over himself. I have over the years read nearly 40 books related to Gettysburg, and I have never been as relieved to finally reach the end of a book as I was with "Gettysburg; Memory, Market and an American Shrine". For anyone who finds the history of the town and the battlefield park interesting, I would rather recommend Barbara Platt's excellent "This Is Holy Ground", which is vastly more readable and enjoyable than this too frequently verbose and pretentious essay.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History, Tourism, & Sacred Cows on the Run!, May 2, 2005

By 

Theo Logos (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine (Hardcover)

Jim Weeks' has created a fascinating study of American culture, class, and capitalism, over the past one hundred and forty years by chronicling and dissecting our changing relationship to the Gettysburg Battlefield National Park. This shrine became a tourist attraction before the bodies were buried, and remains one of our best known national shrines and most popular of tourist attractions to this day. Yet for each generation, Gettysburg has had a different meaning, appealed to different social classes for different reasons, and has been marketed differently. Weeks has examined the changing appeal of Gettysburg to the American psyche to draw some conclusions on how we view our history and see ourselves through it, how and why we create our national myths, and, in short, how we imagine and re-imagine ourselves as a people.
This book hit close to home for me, because my childhood experience fit squarely within its scope. My father was a Civil War buff, and our family made several pilgrimages to Gettysburg. Numerous black and white photos show me as a kid posing with Yankee cap, sword and gun on various cannons and monuments throughout the park. Our oft told family legend even claims that Dad took Mom to Gettysburg on their honeymoon. When Weeks wrote chapter six; `Automobiles and Family Touring', he could have been working from our family albums.
This is a book of social historical criticism, and if you prefer to take our national mythology at face value rather than questioning it, you should probably pass on it. Weeks is aggressive, perhaps even elitist, in the way he questions our social conventions, and he seems to like to poke sacred cows just to hear them moo. None of that changes the fact that he has written a fascinating book full of intriguing ideas. Despite his somewhat arrogant tone, Weeks' book is well worth reading.

Theo Logos