Place, Race, and Story: Essays on the Past and Future of Historic Preservation

Ned Kaufman has been at the vanguard of historic preservation thought and activism for two decades. He has challenged preservationists to go beyond a traditional focus on beautiful buildings and become a part of a larger movement for social justice. Place, Race, and Story shows us the way by offering frameworks and case studies that both critique and provide inspiring examples of what a progressive preservation movement looks like. - Max Page, University of Massachusetts, and author of The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction

Preservationists usually focus on the how; Ned Kaufman reminds us to ask why we are preserving. Then he thoughtfully answers, showing us how preservation can better connect us and our places through the shared stories in people's lives. - Michael Holleran, University of Texas at Austin, and author of Boston's Changeful Times : Origins of Preservation and Planning in America

Caught up in the day-to-day struggle to keep America's heritage intact and alive, preservationists don't often think about our movement's origins, milestones and philosophical underpinnings. That's a mistake. Ned Kaufman's thoughtful and enormously useful book reminds us of the importance of knowing how we got here - and how the journey changed us. - Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation

Place, Race, and Story is truly absorbing, well-written and consistently thought-provoking....This is an important work of great relevance to serious interpreters of heritage. -Michael Hamish Glen, Association for Heritage Interpretation

In this provocative volume, Ned Kaufman calls for a reconsideration of historic preservation guidelines in order to accommodate the needs of communities to describe their own significance. This book provide[s] valuable discussion material for graduate students and practitioners in the field of historic preservation....The author successfully argues that in order to fashion a more inclusive practice of historic preservation, a more expansive view is needed. -Doris Devine Fanelli, Independence National Historical Park, CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship

Ned Kaufman points the way towards a more relevant, expansive, and vital historic preservation movement; a movement committed to social equity, steeped in ethnography and politics, and guided less by the imperatives of architectural history practice and more by sensitivity to the human values manifested in everyday attachments to place. -Daniel Bluestone, University of Virginia, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

As a preservation activist and practitioner, Kaufman possesses significant on-the-ground experience from which readers will benefit... [T]his is a valuable contribution to the fields of urban studies, cultural heritage studies, to the growing body of literature on race and space, and, of course, to the literature on historic preservation. - Dianne Harris, University of Illinois, Journal of American History

Participates in a long, evolving tradition of caring for the built environment. That quality makes this book a welcome illustration of both how far preservation has come in recent years and how much there is left to do. - Jeffrey E. Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum