Washington: The Making of the American Capital

EXCERPTS: The Prologue

REVIEWS: Wall street Journal | Publisher’s Weekly | Kirkus Reviews | Bit-O-Lit.com | Harper Collins | Politics in Color | Washington Post

COMMENTARY BY FERGUS m. bordewich: NY Daily News | W. S. Journal

“Fergus Bordewich’s Washington: The Making of the American Capital is a tour de force, a story of ‘magnificent intentions,’ fateful compromises, classic greed, and improbable characters—American history at the beginning that is as current as the latest national news.”—David Levering Lewis, author of District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History and a biography of W.E.B. Du Bois

“Washington is a must-read for anyone fascinated by politics and the backroom story of American history. Bordewich’s work reads like a political thriller as it reveals the political scheming, deal making, greed—and yes, idealism—that drove the creation of America’s capital.”—U.S. Senator Charles Schumer

“Fergus Bordewich’s stunningly detailed new book brings to life the political constraints that landed the capital in slave territory on the Potomac and the government’s struggle to meet a critical completion deadline, all the while naively relying on scam artists, financial neophytes, and disastrous lotteries. An important and too long overlooked thread throughout Bordewich’s Washington: the Making of the American Capital, is the vital role played by African-Americans, largely enslaved but also free, in creating the new American capital.”—Mary Kay Ricks, author of Escape on the Pearl: the Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad

“Fergus Bordewich’s book is a splendid and eminently readable account of both the seamy and idealistic impulses that placed our nation’s capital where it is, and an excellent reminder of the importance of land speculation in our political history from the very beginning to today.”—Michael Korda, author of Ike and Ulysses S. Grant

“In sum, Bordewich tells a fascinating tale, and tells it well.”—Publishers Weekly Starred Review