MICRO-CAPSULE: Most of 14th Street Is Gone by J. Samuel Walker (2018)

The capital's a funny place, and not just for the obvious reasons most people know about. Consider, for instance, this apparently trivial datum. There is, as far as I know, no book-length history of the 130-year-old National Zoo, despite its importance to the city's tourism-centric economy and the history of conservation and more besides. (The nearest thing is an out-of-print extended pamphlet from 40 years ago, published by the Friends of the National Zoo, or FONZ.)

Or consider this, from the recent book Most of 14th Street Is Gone. According to author-historian J. Samuel Walker's notes on his sources, at publication time in 2018 there were only two books-- not counting his own-- about the April 1968 riots in Washington, D.C. That is, about the events that gutted a lot of the city's economy for decades and that, perhaps more than anything else, shaped life in the national capital we have now. In fifty years, two books. 

In his introduction to this brief and absorbing study of the turmoil of April 1968, Walker, an expert on nuclear power and weapons, says himself: "I have been a resident of the Washington, DC suburbs for nearly five decades, but I knew little about the city's long and fascinating history until I started working on this book." 

It's impossible not to notice this about the capital if you live in it: it's a city of people who know all about (say) Taiwan and next to nothing about what happened here--and Walker's book is an impressive contribution--or who lives in the next postal code. ​

So's everywhere, up to a point. Three things, though, make it remarkable here. First, the population's relatively well-educated. Second, the city's middle-sized. Third, it's a city of experts on everything from everywhere. How (I ask because I don't know) how can a place that knows everything about everything have so little notion of itself? Why are the migrant expert's binoculars so often pointed elsewhere, even after he makes the place his home?