NEW YORK (AP) - New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is working on a book about his views on race and his support for taking down four Confederate monuments earlier this year.
Viking told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Landrieu's "In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History" will come out in March.
The publisher announced that the Democratic mayor will trace his personal history and look at the larger history of racism in the U.S. The publisher describes the book as "a passionate, personal, urgent book from the man who sparked a national debate."
Landrieu says the country is at a "pivotal moment" and that he hopes to offer a path out of the current divisions of race, religion and politics.
The 57-year-old Landrieu is the first white mayor of mostly black New Orleans in decades. He has called the Confederate statues celebratory of a South that defended slavery.
Landrieu pushed to have monuments to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, and the Battle of Liberty Place obelisk removed, a decision that spurred impassioned debate about whether they should stay or go.
“There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it," Landrieu said during a speech he delivered as a crane hoisted the Lee statue off its pedestal at Lee Circle.
Landrieu's book will be "equal parts unblinking memoir, history, and prescription for finally confronting America’s most painful legacy," Viking said in describing it.
