The destruction of Nimrud and Palmyra, crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The Destruction of Memory, now with a new preface, argues that such destruction not only shatters a nation’s culture and morale but is a deliberate act of eradicating a culture’s memory and, ultimately, its existence. A film of the same name based on the book will be released in early 2016.
