Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation's Capital

Categories: Travel , Nonfiction

When I was ten years old, our family visited Washington, DC.  The thing I really remember about that trip is how on the last day, my brother wandered off on his own at the Smithsonian, and almost made us miss our flight home.  Luckily for him, my parents’ relief at finding he was safe made them forget to worry about the possibility of being out the price of those plane tickets. 

 With Spring having arrived (finally!), now seems like a great time to see Washington once more.   And while there are plenty of excellent, traditional travel guides to the city, there’s another option for people who enjoy a bit of satire mixed in with their sightseeing prospects.  Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital, by Christopher Buckley, fits the bill perfectly.  Buckley’s book is a travel guide/ comic history lesson about the city on the Potomac.   

The book covers everything from the gravesite in Arlington Cemetery of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the temperamental Frenchman who planned the city, to the soaring fresco in the Capitol building, which includes a slightly less inspirational figure of a woman, rumored to be the mistress of the artist, Constantino Brumidi.  From the ridiculous (The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, said to resemble a Victorian Wedding Cake), to the sublime  (Union Station, the breathtaking threshold to the city), Buckley’s wonderful book covers it all.