epitaph

Their epitaph was the greatest bloodbath in American history.

When the cartographer James Cheshire stumbled into the room in University College London several years ago, he encountered less a resource for mapping the modern globe than “an epitaph of a world we once knew.”

In words he shared with teenagers, Prefontaine wrote his own best epitaph: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

Instead, it seems that American exceptionalism will play a prominent role in the epitaph for American democracy.

There’s an abundance of small slabs, simple epitaphs like Our Baby.