Every so often you come across a book that serves as a reminder about the importance of public history. Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed is one such book. Over the course of over three-hundred pages Smith draws critical connections between public memory, place, and historical understanding, while emphasizing the role public historians play in making those connections. It is a book about identity, about interrogating your own personal narrative while looking to places around you to gain knowledge that you may not have had before.
I came across this book as part of my work at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and I had the opportunity to interview Smith, a poet as well as staff writer at the Atlantic, about the way How the Word is Passed uses place as a focal point to tell his story. It was also one of the first books in...