Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation's River
Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation's River
Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation's River
Description
Description
An impassioned meditation on American identity and its ebb and flow through the Capital's great waterway
As she walks the length of the Potomac River, clambering up its banks and sounding its depths, Charlotte Taylor Fryar examines the geography and ecology of Washington, D.C. with all manner of flora and fauna as her witness. The ecological traces of human inhabitancy provide her with imaginative access into America's past, for her true subject is the origin of our splintered nation and racially divided capital.
From the gentrified neighborhood of Shaw to George Washington's slave labor camp at Mount Vernon, Potomac Fever maps the troubled histories of the United States by leading us along the less-trafficked trails and side streets of our capital city, steeped in the legacy of white supremacy and colonialism. In the end, Fryar offers hope for how "we might grow a society guided by the ethics and values of the places we live."
A compelling synthesis of historical, environmental, and personal narrative, Potomac Fever exposes the roots of our national myths, awash in the waters of America's renowned river.
About the Author
About the Author
Charlotte Taylor Fryar is a writer, historian, educator, and herbalist. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Glen Echo, Maryland, less than seven hundred feet from the banks of the Potomac River. Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation's River is her first book.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
Reading Group Choices "Editors' Picks" selection
Shelf Unbound "Recommended Reading" selection
Kirkus Reviews "Exploring Water Worlds Booklist" selection
"Both a love letter to the Potomac and a sharp critique of American myths, Potomac Fever is a lyrical and thought-provoking debut." --Arlington Magazine
"Written with verve and a profound understanding of the contradictions of American democracy. . . . Readers might curl up with [Fryar's] book in the comfort of home or, after visiting the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, take it with them on a stroll along [the Potomac]. . . . A lovely ode to an oft-neglected river." --Kirkus Reviews
"For readers looking for a different lens through which to view the U.S. capital and to see both the ugly impacts of racism and the beauty of nature." --Library Journal
"Fryar seamlessly weaves a fascinating history of racial, class, and gendered divisions that exist in and outside of Washington, D.C.'s quintessential worlds of interrelated nature and American (in)humanity." --Marcie Cohen Ferris, coeditor of Southern Cultures journal and author of The Edible South
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
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