American Mourning

Simon Stow is an Associate Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary, where he teaches classes in the history of, and topics in, political thought. Simon is the author of Republic of Readers? The Literary Turn in Political Thought and Analysis (2007), which was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. He co-edited A Political Companion to John Steinbeck (2013) and has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Political Thought, Perspectives of Politics, and Theory and Event.

'The dead are alive in the American polity'. With this riveting sentence, Simon Stow commences a brilliant and engaging book on the relationships among death, democracy, and public mourning in the United States. Stow not only deploys public mourning to delineate the problematic aspects of American democracy; he also uses it as a prescriptive device to reanimate it. American Mourning is a profound contribution to democratic theory and practice that speaks sagely to these times.' Steven Johnston, Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Thought, Public Policy, and Public Service and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Utah

• 1. Pericles at Gettysburg and Ground Zero: tragedy, patriotism, and public mourning; 2. A homegoing for Mrs King: on the democratic value of African American responses to loss; 3. Mourning bin Laden: Aeschylus, victory, and the democratic necessity of political humanism; 4. Homecoming and reconstitution: nostalgia, mourning, and military return; 5. Mourning as democratic resilience: going on together in the face of loss.