Description
Book SynopsisMore than four million people a year visit Valley Forge, one of America's most celebrated historic sites. This text examines how the site of Washington's 1778 winter encampment evolved into the tourist mecca it is today and what, exactly, it is supposed to represent.
Trade Review“A few decades after the Revolutionary War, Valley Forge was a largely ignored battlefield that was rapidly reverting to farmland; this year as many as four million tourists will visit the site. Thus, it is both instructive and interesting to follow the evolution of this national shrine. Treese, an archivist at Bryn Mawr College, has a knack for breathing life into seemingly dry and fragmented documentary evidence. She skillfully examines lore about Valley Forge, including Washington’s supposed pleas for divine guidance and the striking image of snow stained with the blood of shoeless, starving soldiers. She also reveals the often passionate conflicts and rivalries over development and concession rights. Finally, she paints a revealing portrait of the manner in which Americans, past and present, have chosen to view their history. In an age when the bloodstained, hallowed ground of Virginia battlefields is coveted as a site for a Disney theme park, Treese’s work is a timely reminder that some treasures can’t be calculated in dollars and cents.”
—Booklist
“All in all, this is a very solid book that should provide good information and interesting reading for varied audiences. The author is a gifted writer. . . . Her work is no doubt sensible, not so much because it is so well researched (which it is) but because it enjoys a reasonably coherent context generally provided by the current scholarship.”
—Robert Weible Pennsylvania History
“Valley Forge: Making and Remaking a National Symbol is meticulously researched and engagingly written. As a chronicle of more than a century of attempts to establish a national myth and to map that myth onto a particular piece of real estate, the book succeeds completely.”
—Parker B. Potter William and Mary Quarterly
