Forgotten today, established Black communities once existed in the alleyways of Washington, D.C., even in neighborhoods as familiar as Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. James Borchert's study delves into the lives and folkways of the largely alley dwellers and how their communities changed from before the Civil War, to the late 1890s era when almost 20,000 people lived in alley houses, to the effects of reform and gentrification in the mid-twentieth century.

Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, the founders of Dumbarton Oaks, were not, per se, collectors of American art. Nevertheless, they acquired interesting and, at times, important examples of American paintings, drawings, etchings, and sculptures. Such acquisitions were but a part of an overall collection which comprised ancient Chinese, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and European old master artworks as well as rare books, literary manuscripts and correspondence, important furnishings, unusual bibelots, and concert-quality instruments. The American artworks that remain at Dumbarton Oaks offer an important insight into the Blisses’ remarkable breadth of vision for their collection.

This volume catalogues the American art collection at Dumbarton Oaks and is published in conjunction with an exhibition, “American Art at Dumbarton Oaks.” An introductory essay describes the formation of this collection by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss and their parents Anna and William H. Bliss, while the subsequent catalogue entries elaborate on nineteen artworks by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Elihu Vedder, Walter Gay, Childe Hassam, Albert Edward Sterner, Henry Golden Dearth, and Bernice Cross. Richly illustrated with color plates and comparative illustrations, this catalogue will be an important and enduring reference for scholars, students, and admirers of American art.

Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks presents the Andean portion of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. It superbly illustrates all 133 Andean objects in color plates, and includes many complementary and comparative black-and-white illustrations and drawings. The body of Pre-Columbian art that Robert Bliss carefully assembled over a half-century between 1912 and 1963, and which has been amplified slightly since his death, is a remarkably significant collection. These works of art are among the finest examples of the visual arts produced by Andean cultures.

This Andean volume is the first in a series of four catalogues that will treat the entirety of the Bliss Pre-Columbian collection; the others planned will focus on objects from eastern Mesoamerica (Olmec and Maya), western Mesoamerica (Teotihuacan, Veracruz, Mixtec, and Aztec), and Lower Central America.

Andean Art is composed of five topical essays, shorter essays on the Andean cultures represented in the collection, and discussions of the individual objects. These were written by specialists in Pre-Columbian art, presenting the latest in scholarly thinking on Andean cultures and the objects. All thirteen authors bring broad perspectives from Andean culture history, archaeology, and art history to their contributions, but they focus their attentions primarily on the objects themselves, in order to provide meaningful contexts for them and to highlight how these objects, as works of art created and used purposefully, reveal special qualities of Andean culture.

The reader is provided with a fine sense of how the creators and original owners of the pieces in the Bliss collection used and valued these artworks on many levels. The authors also place individual objets alongside others of their type in so far as possible. An extraordinary feature of this volume is the technical descriptions of the metal objects provided by metals specialist Heather Lechtman.

In 1790, two events marked important points in the development of two young American institutions—Congress decided that the new nation's seat of government would be on the banks of the Potomac, and John Carroll of Maryland was consecrated as America's first Catholic bishop. This coincidence of events signalled the unexpectedly important role that Maryland's Catholics, many of them by then fifth- and sixth-generation Americans, were to play in the growth and early government of the national capital. In this book, William W. Warner explores how Maryland's Catholics drew upon their long-standing traditions—advocacy of separation of church and state, a sense of civic duty, and a determination "to live at peace with all their neighbors," in Bishop Carroll's phrase—to take a leading role in the early government, financing, and building of the new capital.

Beginning with brief histories of the area's first Catholic churches and the establishment of Georgetown College, At Peace with All Their Neighbors explains the many reasons behind the Protestant majority's acceptance of Catholicism in the national capital in an age often marked by religious intolerance. Shortly after the capital moved from Philadelphia in 1800, Catholics held the principal positions in the city government and were also major landowners, property investors, and bankers. In the decade before the 1844 riots over religious education erupted in Philadelphia, the municipal government of Georgetown gave public funds for a Catholic school and Congress granted land in Washington for a Catholic orphanage.

The book closes with a remarkable account of how the Washington community, Protestants and Catholics alike, withstood the concentrated efforts of the virulently anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic American nativists and the Know-Nothing Party in the last two decades before the Civil War.

This chronicle of Washington's Catholic community and its major contributions to the growth of the nations's capital will be of value for everyone interested in the history of Washington, D.C., Catholic history, and the history of religious toleration in America.

The Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks was prepared by Beatrix Farrand as a resource for those charged with maintenance of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens following their acquisition by Harvard University in 1941. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Gardens, and in conjunction with the Farrand’s 150th birthday, this new edition contains updated commentary and new contemporary and historical photography, showing the gardens in all their current beauty and as they were conceived and created. Accompanying the original plant lists, Farrand’s text carefully explains the reasoning behind her plan for each of the gardens and shares how each should be cared for in order that its basic character should remain intact. While she provides suggestions for alternative plantings, strictures concerning pruning and replacement, and exposition of the overall concept that underlies each detail, Jonathan Kavalier’s thoughtful commentary provides context for changes that have affected new plant choices for the gardens, such as new, disease resistant cultivars and recognition that some plants are now considered invasive. This book is an excellent companion to a stroll through the garden for any lover of plants and landscape architecture, and any fan of Farrand’s garden design.

An original history of six generations of an African American family living in Washington, DC

Between Freedom and Equality begins with the life of Capt. George Pointer, an enslaved African who purchased his freedom in 1793 while working for George Washington’s Potomac Company. It follows the lives of six generations of his descendants as they lived and worked on the banks of the Potomac, in the port of Georgetown, and in a rural corner of the nation’s capital. By tracing the story of one family and their experiences, Between Freedom and Equality offers a moving and inspiring look at the challenges that free African Americans have faced in Washington, DC, since the district’s founding.

The story begins with an 1829 letter from Pointer that is preserved today in the National Archives. Inspired by Pointer’s letter, authors Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green began researching this remarkable man who was a boat captain and supervisory engineer for the Potomac canal system. What they discovered about the lives of Pointer and his family provides unique insight across two centuries of Washington, DC, history.

The Pointer family faced many challenges—the fragility of freedom in a slaveholding society, racism, wars, floods, and epidemics—but their refuge was the small farm they purchased in what is now Chevy Chase. However, in the early twentieth century, the DC government used eminent domain to force the sale of their farm and replaced it with an all-white school. Between Freedom and Equality grants Pointer and his descendants their long-overdue place in American history.

This book includes a foreword by historian Maurice Jackson exploring the significance of the Pointer family’s unique history in the capital. In another very personal foreword, James Fisher, an eighth-generation descendant of George Pointer, shares his complex emotions when he learned about his ancestors. Also featured in this important history is a facsimile and transcription of George Pointer’s original letter and a family tree.

Royalties from the sale of the book will go to Historic Chevy Chase DC (HCCDC), which has established a fund for promoting the legacy of George Pointer and his descendants.

Georgetown's little-known black heritage shaped a Washington, DC, community long associated with white power and privilege.

Black Georgetown Remembered reveals a rich but little-known history of the Georgetown black community from the colonial period to the present. Drawing on primary sources, including oral interviews with past and current residents and extensive research in church and historical society archives, the authors record the hopes, dreams, disappointments, and successes of a vibrant neighborhood as it persevered through slavery and segregation, war and peace, prosperity and depression.

This beautifully redesigned 25th anniversary edition of Black Georgetown Remembered, first published in 1991, includes a foreword by Maurice Jackson and more than two hundred illustrations, including portraits of prominent community leaders, sketches, maps, and nineteenth-century and contemporary photographs. Kathleen Menzie Lesko's new introduction describes the impact the book and its companion documentary video have had since publication and updates readers on recent changes in this Washington, DC, neighborhood.

Black Georgetown Remembered is a compelling and inspiring journey through more than two hundred years of history. A one-of-a-kind book, it invites readers to share in the lives, dreams, aspirations, struggles, and triumphs of real people, to join them in their churches, at home, and on the street, and to consider how the unique heritage of this neighborhood intersects and contributes to broader themes in African American and Washington, DC, history and urban studies.

Georgetown's little-known Black heritage shaped a Washington, DC, community long associated with white power and privilege.

Black Georgetown Remembered reveals a rich but little-known history of the Georgetown Black community from the colonial period to the present. Drawing on primary sources, including oral interviews with past and current residents and extensive research in church and historical society archives, the authors record the hopes, dreams, disappointments, and successes of a vibrant neighborhood as it persevered through slavery and segregation, war and peace, prosperity and depression.

This thirtieth anniversary edition of Black Georgetown Remembered, first published in 1991, features more than two hundred illustrations, including portraits of prominent community leaders, sketches, maps, and nineteenth-century and contemporary photographs. A new chapter includes a conversation with former and current Georgetown residents reflecting on the community, past and present.

Black Georgetown Remembered is a compelling and inspiring journey through more than two hundred years of history. A one-of-a-kind book, it invites readers to share in the lives, dreams, aspirations, struggles, and triumphs of real people, to join them in their churches, at home, and on the street, and to consider how the unique heritage of this neighborhood intersects and contributes to broader themes in African American and Washington, DC, history and urban studies.

An insightful exploration of the impact of urban change on Black culture, identity, and language

Across the United States, cities are changing. Gentrification is transforming urban landscapes, often pushing local Black populations to the margins. As a result, communities with rich histories and strong identities grapple with essential questions. What does it mean to be from a place in flux? What does it mean to be a specific kind of person from that place? What does gentrification mean for the fabric of a community?

In The Black Side of the River, sociolinguist Jessi Grieser draws on ten years of interviews with dozens of residents of Anacostia, a historically Black neighborhood in Washington, DC, to explore these ideas through the lens of language use. Grieser finds that residents use certain speech features to create connections among racial, place, and class identities; reject negative characterizations of place from those outside the community; and negotiate ideas of belonging. In a neighborhood undergoing substantial class gentrification while remaining decisively Black, Grieser finds that Anacostians use language to assert a positive, hopeful place identity that is inextricably intertwined with their racial one.

Grieser’s work is a call to center Black lived experiences in urban research, confront the racial effects of urban change, and preserve the rich culture and community in historic Black neighborhoods, in Washington, DC, and beyond.

Illustrated highlights from the Judaica Collection of the Library of Congress.
 
Books Like Sapphires showcases a wide range of Hebraic treasures from the storied collection at the Library of Congress, many of them for the first time. Tracing the history of Judaica collecting in the twentieth-century United States, the book illuminates varied works, telling their stories alongside vibrant color images. These include a unique manuscript about a betrothal scandal in Renaissance Crete, an illustrated Esther Scroll, a poem from 1477 celebrating the new technology of printing, amusing rhymed couplets in sixteenth-century Padua, and the Washington Haggadah. This book also tells the story of the patrons and collectors, first among them Jacob Schiff, as well as archivists and curators, who made the storied Judaica archive at the Library of Congress the precious resource that it is today.

The celebration of Washington D.C. basketball is long overdue. The D.C. metro area stands second to none in its contributions to the game. Countless figures who have had a significant impact on the sport over the years have roots in the region, including E.B. Henderson, the first African-American certified to teach public school physical education, and Earl Lloyd, the first African-American to take the court in an actual NBA game. The city's Spingarn High School produced two players – Elgin Baylor and Dave Bing – recognized among the NBA’s 50 greatest at the League’s 50th anniversary celebration. No other high school in the country can make that claim.These figures and many others are chronicled in this book, the first-ever comprehensive look at the great high school players, teams and coaches in the D.C. metropolitan area. Based on more than 150 interviews, The Capital of Basketball is first and foremost a book about basketball. But in discussing the trends and evolution of the game, McNamara also uncovers the turmoil in the lives of the players and area residents as they dealt with prejudice, educational inequities, politics, and the ways the area has changed through the years.

Marvin Ross’s groundbreaking catalogue of jewelry in the Byzantine Collection at Dumbarton Oaks was first published in 1965. The volume has long been out of print, but its enormous popularity and enduring status led to a reprint, this time with color photographs. Accompanying the reprint edition is an addendum by Susan Boyd and Stephen Zwirn with twenty-two new objects acquired by Dumbarton Oaks Collection between 1962 and 1999.

This catalogue highlights the fifty-two sculptures in the Byzantine Collection at Dumbarton Oaks. The objects range from the third-century BC miniature portrait head of a Ptolemaic emperor to the sixteenth-century lindenwood “Queen of Heaven” by Tilmann Riemenschneider.

These sculptures are not representative of any one culture or period, but rather are characteristic of the Blisses’ wide-ranging tastes and extraordinary connoisseurship. About a quarter of the objects are Greco-Roman in date, and nearly two-thirds of the remainder are Late Antique, predominantly limestone carvings from Early Byzantine Egypt. Sculpture from the Middle Byzantine period is very rare, making the four pieces in this collection especially significant.

An inside look at how midcentury DC journalists silenced their own skepticism and shaped public perceptions of the Cold War.

Americans’ current trust in journalists is at a dismayingly low ebb, particularly on the subject of national and international politics. For some, it might be tempting to look back to the mid-twentieth century, when the nation’s press corps was a seemingly venerable and monolithic institution that conveyed the official line from Washington with nary a glint of anti-patriotic cynicism. As Kathryn McGarr’s City of Newsmen shows, however, the real story of what Cold War–era journalists did and how they did it wasn’t exactly the one you’d find in the morning papers.
 
City of Newsmen explores foreign policy journalism in Washington during and after World War II—a time supposedly defined by the press’s blind patriotism and groupthink. McGarr reveals, though, that DC reporters then were deeply cynical about government sources and their motives, but kept their doubts to themselves for professional, social, and ideological reasons. The alliance and rivalries among these reporters constituted a world of debts and loyalties: shared memories of harrowing wartime experiences, shared frustrations with government censorship and information programs, shared antagonisms, and shared mentors. McGarr ventures into the back hallways and private clubs of the 1940s and 1950s to show how white male reporters suppressed their skepticism to build one of the most powerful and enduring constructed realities in recent US history—the Washington Cold War consensus. Though by the 1960s, this set of reporters was seen as unduly complicit with the government—failing to openly critique the decisions and worldviews that led to disasters like the Vietnam War—McGarr shows how self-aware these reporters were as they negotiated for access, prominence, and, yes, the truth—even as they denied those things to their readers.

In March 1988, students at Gallaudet University led a successful protest to demand the selection of the university’s first deaf president. The Deaf President Now (DPN) movement was a watershed event in American deaf history;­ it achieved self-governance for the deaf community and placed Gallaudet in the center of a national media spotlight. Controlling Our Destiny is Philip Bravin’s personal perspective of these momentous events. A lifelong member of the deaf community and proud Gallaudet alumnus, Bravin was a member of the Gallaudet University Board of Trustees and the chair of the presidential search committee during DPN. Although the deaf community had been strongly advocating for a deaf president to lead the university, the board (which had a hearing majority) selected the lone hearing candidate.

       Bravin recounts the discussions and decision-making that happened behind the scenes leading up to and following the ill-fated announcement. He reflects on the integrity of the process and the internal conflict he experienced as a deaf person who supported a deaf president yet felt compelled to abide by his duties as a board member. After the protests, his leadership was recognized when he was selected as the first deaf chair of the board. Photographs and documents add depth to Bravin’s account, many of which will be seen by the public for the first time. I. King Jordan, the first deaf president of Gallaudet, provides a foreword in which he shares his own unique insight into these events.

       Controlling Our Destiny captures the energy and the urgency of DPN. Readers will understand the complexities of the presidential search process and the cultural and historical contexts that triggered the protest. Bravin’s memoir contemplates power, access, community, and the enduring legacy of a movement that inspired deaf people around the world.

“As is well known, Pete is an outstanding storyteller, and this book is no exception."
—Claire Strom, Journal of Southern History

In addition to chronicling significant exhibit work at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Curating the American Past, captures the excitement inherent in researching and writing history and Pete Daniel’s efforts to prevent diluted celebratory stories from replacing the red meat of the American past.

In Curating the American Past, Pete Daniel reveals how curators collect objects, plan exhibits, and bring alive the country’s complex and exciting history. In vivid detail, Daniel recounts the exhilaration of innovative research, the joys of collaboration, and the rewards of mentoring new generations of historians. In a career distinguished by prize-winning publications and pathbreaking exhibitions, Daniel also confronted the challenges of serving as a public historian tasked with protecting a definitive American museum from the erosion of scholarly standards. Curating the American Past offers a wealth of museum wisdom, illuminating the crucial role that dedicated historians and curators serve within our most important repositories of cultural memory.

The familiar history of jazz music in the United States begins with its birth in New Orleans, moves upstream along the Mississippi River to Chicago, then by rail into New York before exploding across the globe. That telling of history, however, overlooks the pivotal role the nation's capital has played for jazz for a century. Some of the most important clubs in the jazz world have opened and closed their doors in Washington, DC, some of its greatest players and promoters were born there and continue to reside in the area, and some of the institutions so critical to national support of this uniquely American form of music, including Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., are rooted in the city. Closer to the ground, a network of local schools like the Duke Ellington High School for the Performing Arts, jazz programs at the University of the District of Columbia and Howard University, churches, informal associations, locally focused media, and clubs keeps the music alive to this day.

Noted historians Maurice Jackson and Blair Ruble, editors of this book, present a collection of original and fascinating stories about the DC jazz scene throughout its history, including a portrait of the cultural hotbed of Seventh and U Streets, the role of jazz in desegregating the city, a portrait of the great Edward "Duke" Ellington’s time in DC, notable women in DC jazz, and the seminal contributions of the University of District of Columbia and Howard University to the scene. The book also includes three jazz poems by celebrated Washington, DC, poet E. Ethelbert Miller. Collectively, these stories and poems underscore the deep connection between creativity and place. A copublishing initiative with the Historical Society of Washington, DC, the book includes over thirty museum-quality photographs and a guide to resources for learning more about DC jazz. 

Deaf President Now! reveals the groundswell leading up to the history-making week in 1988 when the students at Gallaudet University seized the campus and closed it down until their demands were met. To research this probing study, the authors interviewed in-depth more than 50 of the principal players.

This telling book reveals the critical role played by a little-known group called the "Ducks," a tight-knit band of six alumni determined to see a deaf president at Gallaudet. Deaf President Now! details how they urged the student leaders to ultimate success, including an analysis of the reasons for their achievement in light of the failure of many other student movements. This fascinating study also scrutinizes the lasting effects of this remarkable episode in "the civil rights movement of the deaf." Deaf President Now! tells the full story of the insurrection at Gallaudet University, an exciting study of how deaf people won social change for themselves and all disabled people everywhere through a peaceful revolution.

Dumbarton Oaks houses the extraordinary art collection begun by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. In this book the museum publishes the specialist collections in Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, along with examples from the Blisses’ superb European collection, for the first time.

When Robert Bliss recalled handling a jade Olmec figurine in 1913, he said, “That day, the collector’s microbe took root in—it must be confessed—very fertile soil.” The Blisses’ passion for art bore fruit in a remarkably diverse collection: Flemish tapestries, Renaissance furniture, and paintings by the likes of El Greco, Renoir, and Degas. The celebrated Byzantine collection includes floor mosaics from late antique Antioch, sumptuous jewelry, carved ivory reliefs, liturgical silver, and a comprehensive coin and seals collection. The Pre-Columbian collection showcases fine jade carvings, gold jewelry, monumental sculpture, ritual weaponry, colorful ceramics, and intricately woven textiles.

The publication of this new guidebook coincides with the complete refurbishment of Dumbarton Oaks and the creative reinstallation of the galleries. The curators offer highlights of the collection, accompanied by a lucid and thought-provoking text. Dumbarton Oaks: The Collections is intended as a valuable resource and a pleasure to read for scholars and nonspecialists alike.

Garden as Art: Beatrix Farrand at Dumbarton Oaks features essays and photographs of this remarkable landscape as a living and breathing work of art. Published on the occasion of the centennial of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in 2021, the book illuminates the stewardship of one of the most beautiful gardens on earth.

Edited by Thaïsa Way, this volume includes essays from scholars and practitioners as well as photographs by landscape photographer Sahar Coston-Hardy. The essays place the garden in the context of its historical surroundings, explore its archival significance, and reflect on its effects on the world of contemporary design. Accompanying the essays is a collection of newly commissioned photographs by Coston-Hardy that document the seasons and growth in the gardens over the course of a year and that invite the reader to contemplate the art of garden design and the remarkable beauty of the natural world. Archival images of the gardens offer a chronicle of evolving design concepts as well as illustrate how gardens change over time as living works of art. Garden as Art offers an inspiring view of a place that has been remarkably influential in design and the art of landscape architecture.

George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart.

In George Washington’s Final Battle, Robert P. Watson brings this tale to life, telling how the country's first president tirelessly advocated for a capital on the shores of the Potomac. Washington envisioned and had a direct role in planning many aspects of the city that would house the young republic. In doing so, he created a landmark that gave the fledgling democracy credibility, united a fractious country, and created a sense of American identity.

Although Washington died just months before the federal government's official relocation, his vision and influence live on in the city that bears his name.

This little-known story of founding intrigue throws George Washington’s political acumen into sharp relief and provides a historical lesson in leadership and consensus-building that remains relevant today. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the founding period, the American presidency, and the history of Washington, DC.

An invaluable primary resource for understanding nineteenth-century America.

As a Georgetown resident for nearly a century, Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon (1815 – 1911) was close to the key political events of her time. Born into the prominent Peter family, Kennon came into contact with the many notable historical figures of the day who often visited Tudor Place, her home for over ninety years. Now published for the first time, the record of her experiences offers a unique insight into nineteenth-century American history.

Housed in the Tudor Place archives, "The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon" is a collection of Kennon’s memories solicited and recorded by her grandchildren in the 1890s. The text includes Kennon’s memories of her mother Martha Custis Peter and spending time at Mount Vernon with her grandparents George and Martha Washington. It also includes her recollections of childhood in Georgetown, life during the Civil War, the people enslaved at Tudor Place, and daily life in Washington, DC.

Edited by Grant Quertermous, this richly illustrated and annotated edition gives readers a greater appreciation of life in early Georgetown. It includes a guide to the city's streets then and now, a detailed family tree, and an appendix of the many people Britannia encountered—a who's who of the period. Readers will also find Britannia's narrative an essential companion to the incredible collection of objects preserved at Tudor Place. Notable for both its breadth and level of detail, A Georgetown Life brings a new dimension to the study of nineteenth-century America.

Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss were consummate collectors and patrons. After purchasing Dumbarton Oaks in 1920, they significantly redesigned the house and its interiors, built important new structures, added over fifty acres of planned gardens, hosted important musical evenings and intellectual discussions in their Music Room, and acquired a world-class art collection and library.

The illustrated essays in this volume reveal how the Blisses’ wide-ranging interests in art, music, gardens, architecture, and interior design resulted in the creation of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Their collections of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art and rare garden books and drawings are examined by Robert Nelson, Julie Jones, and Therese O’Malley, respectively. James Carder provides the Blisses’ biography and discusses their patronage of various architects, including Philip Johnson, and the interior designer Armand Albert Rateau. The Blisses’ collaboration with Beatrix Farrand on the creation of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens is recounted by Robin Karson, and their commission of Igor Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and its premiere by Nadia Boulanger is examined by Jeanice Brooks. The volume demonstrates that every aspect of the Blisses’ collecting and patronage had a place in the creation of what they came to call their “home of the humanities.”

Alan Hurwitz ascended the ranks of academia to become the president of not one, but two, universities—National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology and Gallaudet University. In Let’s Go In: My Journey to a University Presidency, Hurwitz discusses the unique challenges he encountered as a Deaf person, and the events, people, and experiences that shaped his personal and professional life. He demonstrates the importance of building a strong foundation for progressive leadership roles in higher education, and provides insights into the decision-making and outreach required of a university president, covering topics such as community collaboration, budget management, and networking with public policy leaders. He also stresses that assessing students’ needs should be a top priority. As he reflects on a life committed to service in higher education, Hurwitz offers up important lessons on the issues, challenges, and opportunities faced by deaf and hard of hearing people, and in doing so, inspires future generations of deaf people to aim for their highest goals.

Additional images, videos, and supplemental readings are available at the Gallaudet University Press/Manifold online platform.

Winner, 1999 Missouri Conference on History Book Award

This fascinating biography of a marriage in the Gilded Age closely examines the dynamic flow of power, control, and love between Washington blue blood Violet Blair and New Orleans attorney Albert Janin. Based on their voluminous correspondence as well as Violet’s extensive diaries, it offers a thoroughly intimate portrait of a fifty-four-year union which, in many ways, conformed to societal strictures, yet always created its own definition of itself in order to fit the flux of needs of both husband and wife.

Central to their story is Violet’s fierce determination to maintain her autonomy within the patriarchic institution of marriage. An enduring belle who thought, talked, and acted with the assurance and self-confidence of one whose wishes demanded obedience, she rejected the Victorian ideal of women as silent, submissive consorts. Yet her feminism was a private one, not played out on a public stage but kept to the confines of her own daily life and marriage.

With abundant documentary evidence to draw upon, Laas ties this compelling story to broader themes of courtiship behavior, domesticity, gender roles, extended family bonds, elitism, and societal stereotyping. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century has the dual virtue of making an important historical contribution while also appealing to a broad popular audience.

John Philip Sousa's mature career as the indomitable leader of his own touring band is well known, but the years leading up to his emergence as a celebrity have escaped serious attention. In this revealing biography, Patrick Warfield explains how the March King came to be by documenting Sousa's early life and career. Covering the period 1854 to 1893, this study focuses on the community and training that created Sousa, exploring the musical life of late nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia as a context for Sousa's development.

Warfield examines Sousa's wide-ranging experience composing, conducting, and performing in the theater, opera house, concert hall, and salons, as well as his leadership of the United States Marine Band and the later Sousa Band, early twentieth-century America's most famous and successful ensemble. Sousa composed not only marches during this period but also parlor, minstrel, and art songs; parade, concert, and medley marches; schottisches, waltzes, and polkas; and incidental music, operettas, and descriptive pieces. Warfield's examination of Sousa's output reveals a versatile composer much broader in stylistic range than the bandmaster extraordinaire remembered as the March King.

In particular, Making the March King demonstrates how Sousa used his theatrical training to create the character of the March King. The exuberant bandmaster who pleased audiences was both a skilled and charismatic conductor and a theatrical character whose past and very identity suggested drama, spectacle, and excitement. Sousa's success was also the result of perseverance and lessons learned from older colleagues on how to court, win, and keep an audience. Warfield presents the story of Sousa as a self-made business success, a gifted performer and composer who deftly capitalized on his talents to create one of the most entertaining, enduring figures in American music.

Uncompromising and innovative, hardcore punk in Washington, DC, birthed a new sound and nurtured a vibrant subculture aimed at a specific segment of the city's youth. Shayna L. Maskell explores DC's hardcore scene during its short but storied peak. Led by bands like Bad Brains and Minor Threat, hardcore in the nation's capital unleashed music as angry and loud as it was fast and minimalistic. Maskell examines the music's aesthetics and the unique impact of DC's sociopolitical realities on the sound and the scene that emerged. As she shows, aspects of the music's structure merged with how bands performed it to put across distinctive representations of race, class, and gender. But those representations could be as complicated and contradictory as they were explicit.

A fascinating analysis of a punk rock hotbed, Politics as Sound tells the story of how a generation created music that produced--and resisted--politics and power.

Donald Ritchie examines the lives of early, self-styled congressional journalists such as Horace Greeley, Emily Briggs, Benjamin Perley Poore, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Horace White, James G. Blaine, and others who were positioned in the hub of government when the Civil War, the purchase of Alaska, the Crédit Mobilier scandal, and the Johnson impeachment hearings were making front-page news. Rich in anecdote, this lively book illuminates an important era of journalism and American history. The nascent issues of censorship, right to privacy, and conflict of interest that it describes are still very much with us.

Despite widespread agreement that the District of Columbia's political system has collapsed, there is a serious lack of thoughtful proposals addressing the political future of the nation's capital. In this book, Edward M. Meyers examines the opinions of average Americans about Washington, D.C., in order to understand how many Americans are likely to approach the question of what reforms are needed.

Meyers first explores the political, economic, and social conditions of the District, providing an informed context for understanding and evaluating its political options. Presenting the results of in-depth qualitative research with focus groups held across the country, Meyers reveals that regardless of the participants' knowledge about the District, their beliefs in six basic concepts or schemata—such as respect for democratic rights, attitudes about race, and aversion to an intrusive federal government—molded their opinions about various options for District self-governance. The book concludes with insights into the District by local and national political leaders, including OMB Director Alice Rivlin, Jesse Jackson, Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton, Thomas Davis, and James Walsh, and Marion Barry.

Radical Sisters offers a fresh exploration of the ways that 1960s political movements shaped local, grassroots feminism in Washington, D.C. Rejecting notions of a universal sisterhood, Anne M. Valk argues that activists periodically worked to bridge differences for the sake of alleviating women's plight, even while maintaining distinct political bases. While most historiography on the subject tends to portray the feminist movement as deeply divided over issues of race, Valk presents a more nuanced account, showing feminists of various backgrounds both coming together to promote a notion of "sisterhood" and being deeply divided along the lines of class, race, and sexuality.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, an increasing number of children from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala began arriving without parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. In many cases, the parents had left for the United States years earlier to earn money that they could send back home. In Reunited sociologists Ernesto Castañeda and Daniel Jenks explain the reasons for Central American youths’ migration, describe the journey, and document how the young migrants experience separation from and subsequent reunification with their families.
 
In interviews with Central American youth, their sponsors, and social services practitioners in and around Washington, D.C., Castañeda and Jenks find that Central American minors migrate on their own mainly for three reasons: gang violence, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and a longing for family reunification. The authors note that youth who feel comfortable leaving and have feelings of belonging upon arrival integrate quickly and easily while those who experience trauma in their home countries and on their way to the United States face more challenges.
 
Castañeda and Jenks recount these young migrants’ journey from Central America to the U.S. border, detailing the youths’ difficulties passing through Mexico, proving to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials that they have a legitimate fear of returning or are victims of trafficking, and staying in shelters while their sponsorship, placement, and departure are arranged. The authors also describe the tensions the youth face when they reunite with family members they may view as strangers. Despite their biological, emotional, and financial bonds to these relatives, the youth must learn how to relate to new authority figures and decide whether or how to follow their rules.
 
The experience of migrating can have a lasting effect on the mental health of young migrants, Castañeda and Jenks note. Although the authors find that Central American youths’ mental health improves after migrating to the United States, the young migrants remain at risk of further problems. They are likely to have lived through traumatizing experiences that inhibit their integration. Difficulty integrating, in turn, creates new stressors that exacerbate PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Consequently, schools and social service organizations are critical, the authors argue, for enhancing youth migrants’ sense of belonging and their integration into their new communities. Bilingual programs, Spanish-speaking PTA groups, message boards, mentoring of immigrant children, and after-school programs for members of reunited families are all integral in supporting immigrant youth as they learn English, finish high school, apply to college, and find jobs.
 
Offering a complex exploration of youth migration and family reunification, Reunited provides a moving account of how young Central American migrants make the journey north and ultimately reintegrate with their families in the United States.
 

A richly illustrated architectural “biography” of one of DC’s most important boulevards

Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, DC, has been called the Avenue of the Presidents, Executive Avenue, and the Avenue of Churches. From the front door of the White House, this north-south artery runs through the middle of the District and extends just past its border with Maryland. The street is as central to the cityscape as it is to DC’s history and culture.

In Sixteenth Street NW: Washington, DC’s Avenue of Ambitions, John DeFerrari and Douglas Peter Sefton depict the social and architectural history of the street and immediate neighborhoods, inviting readers to explore how the push and pull between ordinary Washingtonians and powerful elites has shaped the corridor—and the city. This highly illustrated book features notable buildings along Sixteenth Street and recounts colorful stories of those who lived, worked, and worshipped there. Maps offer readers an opportunity to create self-guided tours of the places and people that have defined this main thoroughfare over time.

What readers will find is that both then and now, Sixteenth Street NW has been shaped by a diverse array of people and communities. The street, and the book, feature a range of sites—from Black Lives Matter Plaza to the White House, from mansions and rowhomes to apartment buildings, from Meridian Hill (Malcolm X) Park with its drum circles to Rock Creek Park with its tennis tournaments, and from hotels to houses of worship. Sixteenth Street, NW reveals a cross section of Washington, DC, that shows the vibrant makeup of our nation’s capital.

This deeply felt memoir is a love letter to Washington, DC. Carol Lancaster, a third-generation Washingtonian who knew the city like few others, takes readers on a tour of the nation’s capital from its swamp-infested beginnings to the present day, with an insider’s view of the gritty politics, environment, society, culture, and larger-than-life heroes that characterize her beloved hometown. The former dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a friend of presidents and dignitaries all over the globe, Lancaster colorfully describes the city’s three near-death experiences and the many triumphs and tribulations that emerged as the city took shape. Along the way she provides brief biographies of three of the most influential figures in the city’s history: urban designer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, whose vision for the city was realized only after his death; civic leader “Boss” Shepherd, whose strong-arm tactics cleaned up the downtown area and helped create the walking mall we know today; and controversial mayor Marion Barry, whose rise and fall and resurrection underscored the contemporary challenges of home rule.

Teeming with informative anecdotes and two dozen illustrations of landmarks and key characters, Lancaster’s memoir is a personal and passionate paean to the most powerful city in the world—from one of its most illustrious native daughters.

While we often approach gardens as things to be seen—thus engaging the rational, intellectual part of the human brain—Sound and Scent in the Garden explores the more elusive experiences of sound and smell. These senses are important dimensions of garden design and performance and often have a powerful effect on the human body, yet they may also be ephemeral and difficult to study.

The contributors to the volume explore the sensory experience of gardens specifically as places where people encounter landscape in a staged manner, as a result of intentional design. How do the senses shape the experience of those places? In what ways are plants, gardens, and landscapes produced so as to stimulate the senses? What evidence do we have of historical sensory experiences? What is lost when we forget to acknowledge the sensory environment of the past or simply overlook its traces?

The volume demonstrates a wide variety of approaches to apply to the study of sensory history and illuminates this important dimension of the experience of gardens—past and present, East and West.

Washington Post Bestseller

Washington, DC, stands at the epicenter of world espionage. Mapping this history from the halls of government to tranquil suburban neighborhoods reveals scoresof dead drops, covert meeting places, and secret facilities—a constellation ofclandestine sites unknown to even the most avid history buffs. Until now.

Spy Sites of Washington, DC traces more than two centuries of secret history from the Mount Vernon study of spymaster George Washington to the Cleveland Park apartment of the “Queen of Cuba.” In 220 main entries as well as listings for dozens more spy sites, intelligence historians Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton weave incredible true stories of derring-do and double-crosses that put even the best spy fiction to shame. Maps and more than three hundred photos allow readers to follow in the winding footsteps of moles and sleuths, trace the covert operations that influenced wars hot and cold, and understand the tradecraft traitors and spies alike used in the do-or-die chess games that have changed the course of history.

Informing and entertaining, Spy Sites of Washington, DC is the comprehensive guidebook to the shadow history of our nation’s capital.

At the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, President Washington chose a diamond-shaped site for the city that would bear his name, along with the burdens and blessings of democracy. Situated midway between North and South, the capital was also a gateway to the West--a contested wilderness where rough frontiersmen were already carving a divided nation.

With Indians on their borders and black slaves in their midst, the country's white founders struggled to embody, in bricks and stone, the paradoxical republic they had invented. Inspired by Greek and Roman models, city planners and designers scoured the Western world--from Hadrian's Pantheon to Palladio's Vicenza to the French Royal Academy--for an architectural language to capture the elusive principles of liberty, equality, and union.

Washington from the Ground Up tells the story of a nation whose Enlightenment ideals were tested in the fires of rebellion, removal, and resistance. It is also a tale of two cities: official Washington, whose stately neoclassical buildings expressed the government's power and global reach; and DC, whose minority communities, especially African Americans, lived in the shadows of poverty. Moving chronologically and geographically throughout the District, James McGregor reads this complex history from monuments and museums, libraries and churches, squares and neighborhoods that can still be seen today. His lucid narrative, accompanied by detailed maps and copious illustrations, doubles as a visitor's guide to this uniquely American city.