Washington

Bordewich's history of the making of the U.S. capital--from conception to completion--deals extensively with the racial realities of post-Revolution America. The city of Washington's location was chosen to be close to slave states, and its construction was done largely by slaves. Narrator Richard Allen has the "Darth Vader" voice of James Earl Jones, booming and very African-American. Allen faces a daunting vocabulary ("panegyric," "moiety," "oleaginous") that might seem pretentious to many listeners. He handles it with ease in a regional American accent. Adapting a history with so much geography to an audiobook without maps makes the challenging story even more so. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

March 10, 2008
Bordewich (Bound for Canaan
) depicts how some improbable and unwelcoming terrain on the Potomac came to be chosen in 1790 as the site for the nation’s capital. Bordewich likewise narrates the graft, inefficiencies and myriad injustices that went into the design of the new capital and the construction of the first state buildings. As the author emphasizes, slavery affected everything about the genesis of Washington: the politics of selecting a site that was nominally Southern to placate Jeffersonian Democrats; the construction of such buildings as the White House and the Capitol—projects that exploited slave labor. Bordewich also reveals the backroom politics wherein the conservative Northern Federalist Alexander Hamilton made a deal regarding federal fiscal policy and the siting of the so-called “Federal Territory.” Bordewich is especially strong in painting portraits of such memorable characters as city planner Peter Charles L’Enfant as well as the brilliant black mathematician, astronomer and surveyor Benjamin Banneker, who did essential work on the first survey of the city, along with various piratical speculators whose greed nearly sank the grand project more than once. In sum, Bordewich tells a fascinating tale, and tells it well.