In his forthcoming book, Monumental Harm: Reckoning with Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments, Catholic Law Professor Roger Hartley reflects on the debate over the future of Confederate monuments—at the heart of which is the question of what these monuments represent. Hartley, who became interested in the topic following the 2017 Charlottesville riots, reviews the history of the monuments as well as provides a way to address and resolve the debate. The book is exceptionally timely, given the focus that this debate has produced in recent years.

Hartley has already received praise for his handling of the topic. Professor James McPherson of Princeton said of the book, “The fraught subject of Confederate monuments in prominent public spaces receives the most forthright, well-informed, and unemotional treatment in this book that I have encountered anywhere. Whether or not one agrees with Hartley's argument that these products of the Cult of the Lost Cause symbolizing slavery and white supremacy should be relocated to private land, museums, or Confederate cemeteries, the reader will understand the issue better than ever before.”

Monumental Harm: Reckoning with Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments is due out in December 2020.