Washington: A History of Our National City

Lewis, a writer on the Skidmore College faculty, has produced the most reliable and useful one-volume history of the U.S. capital to date. Its unavoidable theme is the city’s turbulent history of contending with the difficulties posed by Congress’s exclusive jurisdiction over its affairs. Deftly written and enhanced by fitting illustrations, some of them rare and obscure, the book chronicles the city’s vexed experience as a representatives’ and speculators’ playpen as well as the site of unrepresented American citizen’s lives. Lively characters fill its pages: some unsavory, some admirable, and many unknown outside the District of Columbia. Lewis skillfully deals with the city’s troubled race relations, a legacy of slavery. He also brings forth the city’s gradual emergence as a world capital and, in the last 50 years, a city with its own vibrant high and popular culture. Like many historians of Washington, Lewis devotes excessive space to its early years and less to its recent ones, but this is a forgivable defect given the way the founders’ decisions continue to mark, and hobble, the capital. Illus. [em]Agent: Julia Kardon, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.) [/em]