Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore

Former Newsweek editor John Taliaferro calls Mount Rushmore "one of the nation's most luminescent beacons of democracy," ranking up there with the Liberty Bell and the Statue of Liberty. Yet comparatively little is known about its remarkable genesis. Taliaferro wryly notes that pop singer Cher "honestly believed that the sculpture was a natural formation." He tells the story of how Rushmore was conceived and built, and why controversy surrounded the project from the start. Great White Fathers is about the meaning of public art, the rise of automobile tourism, and the development of kitsch culture. At its center is Rushmore's feisty sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who waged an energetic campaign on behalf of his artistic vision and then carved the faces of four presidents into a mountainside. Taliaferro discusses every conceivable aspect of the monument, from the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (a minor hullabaloo) to the Native American activists who have threatened it (a more significant one) to recent suggestions by conservatives that Ronald Reagan's image be added (not yet one only because it hasn't approached reality). Great White Fathers is an engaging blend of travelogue and history; vacationers willing to spend umpteen hours driving all the way to the Black Hills of South Dakota would be wise also to invest a few in this fascinating book. --John J. Miller