Books in Brief: Footnote Washington

Footnote Washington, by Bryson B. Rash (EPM Publications, 127 pp., $7.95).

The cornerstone of the Capitol building was laid by George Washington in 1793, and has never been found. John Wilkes Booth slept in the same bed Lincoln was to die in, a few weeks before the assassination. A fence in Georgetown is made of gun barrels sold after the Mexican War in 1848. Colonel Ulric Dahlgren’s leg is interred in a wall of the Navy Yard foundry. Such are a few of the anecdotes Bryson Rash relates in Footnote Washington, actually a print version of stories he did for Washington television. Mr. Rash, a Washington journalist since 1936, is an inveterate reader of plaques and markers. His nifty “accumulation of sidebars” will delight both residents and visitors of the District. He disappoints by not including any stories about the Old Ebbitt Grill or the Senators baseball team, but leaves open the possibility of another volume. This is the kind of book, and project, that is hard to put down. joe mysak