Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore [Hardcover]

John Taliaferro (Author), Taliaferro (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dakotas | Publication Date: November 5, 2002

The unlikely story of one of the oddest monuments in American history, its obsessive mastermind, and our misguided attempts to create an American heritage. . Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, hoped that ten thousand years from now, when archaeologists came upon the four sixty-foot presidential heads carved in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they would have a clear and graphic understanding of American civilization. Borglum, the child of Mormon polygamists, had an almost Ahab-like obsession with Colossalism-a scale that matched his ego and the era. He learned how to be a celebrity from Auguste Rodin; how to be a political bully from Teddy Roosevelt. He ran with the Ku Klux Klan and mingled with the rich and famous from Wall Street to Washington. Mount Rushmore was to be his crowning achievement, the newest wonder of the world, the greatest piece of public art since Phidias carved the Parthenon. But like so many episodes in the saga of the American West, what began as a personal dream had to be bailed out by the federal government, a compromise that nearly drove Borglum mad. Nor in the end could he control how his masterpiece would be received. Nor its devastating impact on the Lakota Sioux and the remote Black Hills of South Dakota. Great White Fathers is at once the biography of a man and the biography of a place, told through travelogue, interviews, and investigation of the unusual records that one odd American visionary left behind. It proves that the best American stories are not simple; they are complex and contradictory, at times humorous, at other times tragic.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Former Newsweek editor John Taliaferro calls Mount Rushmore "one of the nation's most luminescent beacons of democracy," ranking up there with the Liberty Bell and the Statue of Liberty. Yet comparatively little is known about its remarkable genesis. Taliaferro wryly notes that pop singer Cher "honestly believed that the sculpture was a natural formation." He tells the story of how Rushmore was conceived and built, and why controversy surrounded the project from the start. Great White Fathers is about the meaning of public art, the rise of automobile tourism, and the development of kitsch culture. At its center is Rushmore's feisty sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who waged an energetic campaign on behalf of his artistic vision and then carved the faces of four presidents into a mountainside. Taliaferro discusses every conceivable aspect of the monument, from the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (a minor hullabaloo) to the Native American activists who have threatened it (a more significant one) to recent suggestions by conservatives that Ronald Reagan's image be added (not yet one only because it hasn't approached reality). Great White Fathers is an engaging blend of travelogue and history; vacationers willing to spend umpteen hours driving all the way to the Black Hills of South Dakota would be wise also to invest a few in this fascinating book. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

On page one of this history of Mt. Rushmore, Taliaferro proposes to answer "the questions that any archaeologist would ask": Who are the men represented, how were they chosen, how were they carved, by whom, who visits this shrine? In the end, this overly modest mission statement is the only false note in an impressive work. Like the outsized sculptures blasted out of a granite mountainside, this history, by a former Newsweek editor, is massive, descriptive yet never blandly representational and filled with characters as fully realized as the Mt. Rushmore busts. The central figure is Rushmore's "father"-sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941), a fascinating study in contradictions: a great talent, but a hopeless businessman; a patriot who was also a bigot; a family man who lied about his parentage and ditched his first, much older wife to marry a younger woman who could bear children. Taliaferro (Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs) also uses the story of a monument as a springboard from which to explore the tensions within the American dream: an empire built on slave labor and on land stolen from the Indians; reverence for the common man combined with an infatuation with larger-than-life heroes; a love of the landscape that often takes a backseat to the quest for profit. Like Borglum, Taliaferro set himself a Sisyphean task and has produced a work that is both inspiring and thought provoking. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620983
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620980
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,347,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Man and Monument, both Colossal, December 5, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore (Hardcover)

Gutzon Borglum's name is hardly a household word, but every American knows his greatest work. He was the sculptor that put the faces on Mount Rushmore National Memorial. The enormous heads in the South Dakota rock look calmly out to the great beyond, almost as if they were natural formations. Their conception and completion were far from calm, however, and in _Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore_ (PublicAffairs), John Taliaferro has told the tumultuous story of Borglum's life and life work, as well as the turbulent history of the mountain itself.

Borglum was a bigger than life figure who insisted on puffing himself up any way he could. He insisted that he was the American Phidias, and like many such supremely confident people, he was torn by the idea that others were plotting against him. He returned from art training in Europe to find that his nation was enthusiastic about commemorative sculpture, and he began entering competitions for such things as the design for the memorial to Ulysses S. Grant. He did not win that one, and groused that the jury suspected his entry could not have been made by an American, so they disqualified it. He had similar excuses and similar paranoia in many of his failed endeavors. The Daughters of the American Confederacy approached him in 1914 to carve a memorial on the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia. He signed on to do the work, which the Ku Klux Klan supported financially. And Borglum supported the Klan. He did not become an officially robed member of the organization, but he attended its rallies and supported its aims. He was fired from the job, but the boosters who hired him for South Dakota didn't know about any such problems. He worked for it for decades, dying of cancer in 1941, whereupon Congress declared the monument finished.

Taliaferro has not just written a biography of Borglum, and a fascinating history of the big project, but also a history of the mountain. He includes the Indian Wars of the 1870s, the shameful violations of treaties made with the Indians, and the labor to match the faces of the great white fathers with an even bigger sculpture of Crazy Horse on a nearby mountain. He covers the demonstrations and protests that have been centered at Rushmore in recent decades. The Lakota tribe frequented the Rushmore mountain for centuries for specific ritual purposes, and it is not surprising that they should feel a loss from when the mountain was in its natural state. Taliaferro even includes a description of a recent biker festival, and of course a few pages about Hitchcock's use of the setting in _North by Northwest_. His book even includes reports of the campaigns to have Ronald Reagan added to the mountain, and Elvis Presley, and the most longstanding and fervent campaign, that for Susan B. Anthony. It is an entertaining historic, geologic, and artistic tour.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedic and entertaining, November 29, 2002

By 

Kevin Lauderdale (Annandale, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore (Hardcover)

The Editorial Review above is correct in saying "Taliaferro discusses every conceivable aspect of the monument." The book serves as a biography of sculptor Gutzon Borglum, giving us chapters about his early life and other sculptures prior to Mt. Rushmore. There are chapters devoted to the local Indians and President Coolidge's very brief visit as well. If it has anything to do with the history of Mt. Rushmore, it's in this book. Lucky for us, Taliaferro is skilful writer/historian. This book is never dull or pedantic; it's always fascinating and entertaining. With books like this, I sometimes find myself skipping forward over the slow parts. "Great White Fathers," like Taliaferro's biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Tarzan Forever", contains no slow parts.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Book on A Controversial Monument, April 12, 2004

By 

C. W. Emblom "Bill Emblom" (Ishpeming, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore (Hardcover)

Author John Taliaferro has provided us with an interesting and controversial history of Mount Rushmore. The first part of the book is a general history of the area encompassed by the Great Sioux Reservation of which the Black Hills of South Dakota is included. I found this general history to be a good summary of the conflict between the Native Americans and the American government. During the early 1920's South Dakota historian Doane Robinson wanted a monument of significance in the central part of the country for Americans to visit. Enter Gutzon Borglum who was running into difficulties on his Stone Mountain project in Georgia. The author delves into the strengths and weakness of Borglum as a man and as a sculptor. The project proved to be overly ambitious and ended up being a scaled down version of what was originally intended. The author provides us with numerous tidbits of information as to why the four individuals were chosen to be enshrined and the difficulties in carving their faces. Since Mount Rushmore is on land claimed by the Native Americans, part of the book includes the controversy between what some view as a monument to American democracy while others view it as honoring four individuals who have poor historical dealings with Native Americans. Depending on your point of view Mount Rushmore is either a sight for sore eyes or an eyesore. The book, while controversial, is an interesting read. I did find one mistake. On page 43 the author states the Wounded Knee massacre took place on December 28, 1890. The actual date was December 29, 1890. If you are interested in the history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore I would recommend it to you as a book I'm sure you would enjoy.