A historic guide to Washington, D.C.’s neighborhoods, featuring photographs, maps, and beautiful drawings. - Get off the National Mall and enjoy nine walking and driving tours of Washington, D.C.’s historic neighborhood - Discover the hidden history of the nation’s capital with tales of political intrigue, scandal, romance and tragedy. - Experience the overlooked architectural and cultural treasures in such neighborhoods as Georgetown, Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan and Mount Vernon Square. Owner of A Tour de Force Guided Tours, D.C. historian Jeanne Fogle leads her readers through the hidden sites and history of Washington, D.C.’s neighborhoods. Charming sketches by Edward Fogle and vintage photographs accompany each tour, casting a new light on the city. Visitors and local alike will be surprised and delighted by the discoveries that can be made beyond the monuments.
The author of the popular blog “The Streets of Washington” shares new vignettes and reader favorites exploring the colorful history of America’s capitol. In Lost Washington, D.C., John DeFerrari investigates the bygone institutions and local haunts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Washington may seem eternal and unchanging with its grand avenues and stately monuments, but longtime locals and earlier generations knew a very different place. Discover the Washington of lavish window displays at Woodies, supper at the grand Raleigh Hotel and a Friday night game at Griffith Stadium. From the raucous age of burlesque at the Gayety Theater and the once bustling Center Market to the mystery of Suter's Tavern and the disappearance of the Key mansion in Georgetown, DeFerrari recalls the lost city of yesteryear.
This three-volume reference set explores the history, relevance, and significance of pop culture locations in the United States—places that have captured the imagination of the American people and reflect the diversity of the nation. Pop Culture Places: An Encyclopedia of Places in American Popular Culture serves as a resource for high school and college students as well as adult readers that contains more than 350 entries on a broad assortment of popular places in America. Covering places from Ellis Island to Fisherman's Wharf, the entries reflect the tremendous variety of sites, historical and modern, emphasizing the immense diversity and historical development of our nation. Readers will gain an appreciation of the historical, social, and cultural impact of each location and better understand how America has come to be a nation and evolved culturally through the lens of popular places. Approximately 200 sidebars serve to highlight interesting facts while images throughout the book depict the places described in the text. Each entry supplies a brief bibliography that directs students to print and electronic sources of additional information.
For passengers of the steamboat Wawaset, August 8, 1873, began with a pleasant cruise from Washington, D.C., down the Potomac River. As the Wawaset came into sight of a small Virginia landing, fire broke out below decks, and frantic passengers leapt from the flames only to be pulled down by the swift waters. Author Alvin F. Oickle puts a human face to the tragedy as he profiles some of the seventy-five who perished, among them young mother Alethea Gray and six members of the Reed family. With a fast-paced style and firsthand accounts, Oickle masterfully narrates the last run of the Wawaset against the backdrop of a tense post-Civil War society.
*Updated Edition* A fun, anecdote-filled, encyclopedic look at the circumstances surrounding the deaths of every president and a few “almost presidents,” such as Jefferson Davis. Packed with fun facts and presidential trivia, The President Is Dead! tells you everything you could possibly want to know about how our presidents, from George Washington to George H. W. Bush (who was the most recent president to die), met their ends, the circumstances of their deaths, the pomp of their funerals, and their public afterlives, including stories of attempted grave robbings, reinterments, vandalism, conspiracy theories surrounding their deaths, and much more. The President Is Dead! is filled with never-before-told stories, including a suggestion by one prominent physician to resurrect George Washington from death by transfusing his body with lamb’s blood. You may have heard of a plot to rob Abraham Lincoln’s body from its grave site, but did you know that there was also attempts to steal Benjamin Harrison's and Andrew Jackson’s remains? The book also includes “Critical Death Information,” which prefaces each chapter, and a complete visitor’s guide to each grave site and death-related historical landmark. An “Almost Presidents” section includes chapters on John Hanson (first president under the Articles of Confederation), Sam Houston (former president of the Republic of Texas), David Rice Atchison (president for a day), and Jefferson Davis. Exhaustively researched, The President Is Dead! is richly layered with colorful facts and entertaining stories about how the presidents have passed. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Around the world, Washington, DC, is known for its powerful government, majestic monuments, and world-renowned museums. Secret Washington, DC: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure reminds us that the fabric of the city isn’t solely embedded in its callous political parties, exhausting lawmaking policies, and rampant tourism. Rather, it’s woven through its rich and complex history, mysterious relics, underground societies, forgotten and abandoned buildings, and controversial scandals. From the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield and Francis Scott Key’s son, to crimes of passion and rage at the US Capitol, Secret Washington, DC uncovers many of the dark and untold truths of how our nation emerged. At the same time, it shines a bright light on the capital’s numerous signs of creativity and innovation through the exploration of quirky art installations like Foamhenge and Barbie Pond on Avenue Q, to oddly shaped and decorated homes like the Mushroom House and the Vanadu Art House. Local author and educator JoAnn Hill will introduce you to the other side of Washington, DC: a treasure trove of mystique, peculiarities, and hidden history just waiting to be explored.
The New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 Named one of Vanity Fair's “Best Books of 2022” “Not since Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history.” —George Stephanopoulos Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick’s Secret City. For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret “too loathsome to mention” held enormous, terrifying power. Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Secret City is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of “the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States,” James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century. Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II–era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a “homosexual ring” controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory. Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history.
This book uses qualitative data to explore the experiences and ideas of African Americans confronting and constructing gentrification in Washington, D.C. It contextualizes Black Washingtonians’ perspectives on belonging and attachment during a marked period of urban restructuring and demographic change in the Nation’s Capital and sheds light on the process of social hierarchies and standpoints unfolding over time. African Americans and Gentrification in Washington, D.C. emerges as a portrait of a heterogeneous African American population wherein members define their identity and culture as a people informed by the impact of injustice on the urban landscape. It presents oral history and ethnographic data on current and former African American residents of D.C. and combines these findings with analyses from institutional, statistical, and scholarly reports on wealth inequality, shortages in affordable housing, and rates of unemployment. Prince contends that gentrification seizes upon and fosters uneven development, vulnerability and alienation and contributes to classed and racialized tensions in affected communities in a book that will interest social scientists working in the fields of critical urban studies and urban ethnography. African Americans and Gentrification in Washington, D.C. will also invigorate discussions of neoliberalism, critical whiteness studies and race relations in the 21st Century.
The journalism and personal writings of the great American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass Launching the fourth series of The Frederick Douglass Papers, designed to introduce readers to the broadest range of Frederick Douglass's writing, this volume contains sixty-seven pieces by Douglass, including articles written for North American Review and the New York Independent, as well as unpublished poems, book transcriptions, and travel diaries. Spanning from the 1840s to the 1890s, the documents reproduced in this volume demonstrate how Douglass's writing evolved over the five decades of his public life. Where his writing for publication was concerned mostly with antislavery advocacy, his unpublished works give readers a glimpse into his religious and personal reflections. The writings are organized chronologically and accompanied by annotations offering biographical information as well as explanations of events mentioned and literary or historical allusions.
Washington D.C. is every American's home away from home. Since DC is a compact city with great public transportation, it's easy to explore both its high-profile side - its magnificent monuments, world-class museums, enthralling architecture, breathtaking vistas, and unique national parks - as well as its less famous persona - its cozy hideaways, ethnic eateries, bustling dance clubs, lively theaters, shopaholic hot spots, and more.Now it's a foodies' paradise enlivened with high-tech entrepreneurs and innovative buildings in entirely new and safer neighborhoods. Now, with Walking Washington D.C by local author Barbara J. Saffir, people can get to know the communities of D.C. Each walk tells the story of a neighborhood: a snapshot of some of its history and how it has transformed over the years. Readers will be pointed to distinctive architecture, landmark buildings, popular eateries, ethnic enclaves, art and performance spaces, and natural scenery. Maps and transportation directions make it easy to find your way. Whether you're looking for an afternoon stroll or a daylong outing, grab this book and start walking Washington D.C. After a few miles or a few days, you might fall in love.
