Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History Review

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(More customer reviews)Jane Wilson McWilliams has achieved a rare feat for what ordinarily would be a local history but is likely to have much broader appeal because its subject is the Maryland state capital and home of the U.S.Naval Academy: She has written a book that is as useful for locals as it is for outsiders. Whether it's the existence of those huge Academy radio transmitter towers that greet the mariner or city/county politics in the midst of the post-World War II expansion, she tells the story with grace and detail. Hers also is an inclusive book that weaves in the history of black Annapolis. She says she only followed the objective of the first Annapolis historian, Elihu Riley (The Ancient City, 1887): "To gather the rays of light from their varied sources and to form them into one prism of information."
In addition to McWilliams's writing, the book contains a lot of previously unpublished historical pictures, many striking and some in color. The book, a copublication with the Maryland Historical Trust Press, also is a feather in the cap of Johns Hopkins University Press, which lately has been accused of judging its publication list by salability rather than heft. In terms of Maryland history, this book should be welcomed with the same enthusiasm that greeted Sherry Olson's Baltimore: The Building of an American City, also by Johns Hopkins, three decades ago.
This is local history at its best -- readable but also a basic reference book.

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The story of Annapolis resonates in every century of American history. Annapolis has been home to tobacco plantations, political intrigue, international commerce, the U.S. Naval Academy, ballooning population growth, and colonial, state, and national government. Jane Wilson McWilliams's captivating history explores Annapolis from its settlement in 1650 to its historic preservation campaign of the late twentieth century.McWilliams brings alive the people of Annapolis as she recounts their fortunes and foibles. Be they black or white, slave or master, woman or man, each has a place in this book. With unsurpassed detail and graceful prose, she describes the innermost workings of Maryland's capital city-its social, civic, and religious institutions; its powerful political leaders; and its art, architecture, and neighborhoods. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book chronicles more than three hundred years of Annapolis history. As unique as the city it describes,Annapolis, City on the Severn builds on the most recent scholarship and offers readers a fascinating portrait into the past of this great city.

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