Wow! eBook
January 12, 2006
Author(s): Robert Bevan (Author)
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication Date: May 15, 2016
- Edition: 2nd
- Language: English
- Print length: 240 pages
- ISBN-10: 1780235976
- ISBN-13: 9781780235974
Book Description
Bevan combs through world history to highlight a range of wars and conflicts in which the destruction of architecture was pivotal. From Cortez’s razing of Aztec cities to the carpet bombings of Dresden and Tokyo in World War II to the war in the former Yugoslavia,
The Destruction of Memory exposes the cultural war that rages behind architectural annihilation, revealing that in this subliminal assault lies the complex aim of exterminating a people. He provocatively argues for “the fatally intertwined experience of genocide and cultural genocide,” ultimately proposing the elevation of cultural genocide from “collateral damage” to a crime punishable by international law.Editorial Reviews
Review
― New York Review of Books
“Powerful . . . Bevan’s book serves as a remarkably passionate but evenhanded exposition of the neglected architectural heritage of places like Poland, Muslim Bosnia, Armenia, Tibet, Iraq and Cyprus . . . blends together architectural history with a journalist’s instinct for a human story.”— — Kieran Long ―
Icon“The sheer volume and scope of the material Bevan has gathered on the destruction of architectural heritage as a form of ‘cultural cleansing’ makes
The Destruction of Memory a valuable resource. . . . The mass of absolutely fascinating, morally complex, and, to me at least, often unfamiliar material . . . makes Bevan well worth reading. . . . And yet the book is worth reading, because Bevan uses vivid narrative detail to bring to our attention the important insight that ‘the destruction of the cultural artifacts of an enemy people or nation’ can be a kind of analog to genocide or ethnic cleansing.”— Diana Muir ― History News Network
