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Michael Shane Powers, Brian K. Mitchell, Barrington S. Edwards, and Nick Weldon. Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana., The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 1272–1273, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae251
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Perhaps no era surpasses Reconstruction in its importance for the national development of the United States. It is no accident that examining the Reconstruction era has been a leading avenue of recent study. Previous books like Justin Nystrom’s New Orleans After the Civil War: Race, Politics, and a New Birth of Freedom (2010) have examined how the milieu of Louisiana leaders reflected and shaped national currents. Historians such as Eric Foner, Mark Wahlgren Summers, and Allen C. Guelzo have highlighted the contentious debates over federal power, constitutional amendments, and individual rights that were at the heart of the era. More recently, Adam Fairclough’s Bulldozed and Betrayed: Louisiana and the Stolen Election of 1876 (2021) focuses on the ways Republican Party leaders’ Louisiana strategy hastened the wane of Reconstruction. John Lewis’s autobiographical March trilogy (2013–2016) and Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War (2015) demonstrate that art and historical narrative can merge into an engaging medium. Brian K. Mitchell, Barrington S. Edwards, and Nick Weldon’s graphic history Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana brings fresh, visually compelling analysis to a key, yet understudied, political figure.