Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life by Tom Lewis.
The monumental story of the largest engineered structure ever built -- the American interstate highway system -- is told in dramatic text and pictures. This is the companion volume to the PBS documentary series of the same name.
The year 2002 celebrated the 250th anniversary of the foundation of "George Washington's Mother Lodge." According to the authors of the new book The History of Freemasonry in Virginia, "Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 stands out as one of the brightest Lodges in the early history of Freemasonry in Virginia." Since 1752 it has maintained a continuous Masonic presence in Fredericksburg. Many of the town's prominent citizens have been members, and many of its prominent buildings have Masonic cornerstones.
The Central Rappahannock region produced many of the men who led the fight for independence and fashioned the new American nation. Some are remembered, and afforded their due. Some, like John Francis Mercer, are not remembered -- but should be….
A recent foray into CRRL’s mysterious vaults and back rooms failed to turn up Masonic Secrets or the Lost Ark – but it did turn up something interesting nonetheless: fifteen big, hard-bound volumes of the Lost Newspapers of Spotsylvania!
Pope Benedict XVI recently invited disaffected “Anglican Catholics” to swim the Tiber, as they say -- to cut their old ties to the Anglican Communion and hook up with the Roman Catholic Church. This may be the biggest thing to hit the ecumenical movement in generations….
Who are these disaffected folks? Why did the Pope invite them, and how might they respond?
There have been newspapers published in Fredericksburg since 1788. (The only gap came in 1862-65, when the city was devastated by war.) Fredericksburg has been a one-newspaper town – the Free Lance-Star –- since the 1920s, but before that many newspapers were published locally….
With Google's now infamous detailed photos, it's rather easy to see how a town is laid out today. But what about 50, 100, or 150 years ago? Where are the maps that show how the towns and counties grew through the years? One excellent source of information, the Sanborn fire insurance maps, is available online to our patrons at no charge.
The 25th of January 1759 occasioned Scotland's most famous birthday, when, in a blast of snow and winter winds, Robert Burns was born in a humble cottage in Alloway. That birthday is still celebrated in Scotland, and by Scots and poetry lovers around the world.
