“From Pearl Harbor to Manzanar, Jennifer Ladino’s Memorials Mattershows us how the physical environments of U.S. national memory sites foster affective responses and politicized action. Deploying first-person narrative scholarship and drawing on her experience as a former park ranger, Ladino makes unique and accessible contributions to material ecocriticism, affect studies, and national park studies. As threats to the U.S. national park system continue to proliferate alongside resurgent white nationalisms, Memorials Matterproves a timely and necessary work.”
— Nicole Seymour, author of Strange Natures
“In Ladino’s study, national parks are sites of emotional friction and emotional discovery…For the parks lover and ecocritic alike, Ladino’s book informs and guides.”
— Heather Houser, author of Ecosickness in Contemporary US Fiction
"... I found myself fascinated by the topic...I learned a lot, more than I can possible describe here."
— National Parks Traveler
Memorials Matter offers a timely and thoughtful examination of the ways in which the built and natural environment shape collective memories and national identity...a book commendably and unabashedly of this time.
— Western Historical Quarterly
She is optimistic that the NPS can improve its interpretative work to include the complications of racism and environmental losses in its memorialization while allowing visitors still to feel ‘awe and wonder’ in these amazing landscapes (243). My fingers are crossed that she is right.
— Western American Literature
Public historians and students of public history, especially those interested in the field’s connection to environmental history, will find Ladino’s book both familiar and satisfying. It is familiar because her work is grounded in consideration of humans’ relationship with both the built and natural environments and satisfying because of the academic heft of affect theory and how it helps us better understand and articulate visitors’ and our own experiences with public memorials.
— Public Historian