Invisible Monuments

Howard Mansfield sifts through the commonplace and the forgotten to discover stories that tell us about ourselves and our place in the world. He writes about history, architecture, and preservation, very often set in the Monadnock region. He is the author of a dozen books, including The Bones of the Earth, The Same Ax Twice, Chasing Eden, Dwelling in Possibility: Searching for the Soul of Shelter, and In the Memory House,which The New York Times called “a wise and beautiful book.” In his previous book, I Will Tell No War Stories: What Our Fathers Left Unsaid About World War II, he “breaks through the wall of silence some war veterans maintain,” said Booklist. “The result is an impeccably researched and beautifully written . . . history of all that is left unsaid in the aftermath of war and how that affects the next generation.”

Mansfield has been honored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council as “a gem in our granite landscape” and by the Ruth & James Ewing Arts Awards. He has won a gold medal for Commentary for City and Regional Magazines, a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was a City and Regional Magazine Feature Story Finalist. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Franklin Pierce University.

He has served as a writer and consultant for museums, written and performed a stage show with composer Ben Cosgrove that was the subject of an Emmy Award-winning film, and has co-written a forthcoming documentary film. He lives in Hancock, New Hampshire.