Reading Capital

In a cross-cultural approach to understanding astrology as a magical language, Alice Sparkly Kat unmasks the political power of astrology, showing how it can be channeled as a force for collective healing and liberation.

In the twelfth book of the Capital Mysteries—an early chapter book mystery series featuring fun facts and famous sites from Washington, D.C.—a legend says that on a dead president's birthday, his ghost haunts the famous retreat, Camp David. KC and Marshall are going there on October 14, President Eisenhower's birthday. They aren't worried, until strange things start happening. How did a bat get trapped in their cabin? Why is there blood-red dirt in the trunk by the couch? And what is making the weird thumping noise? It's not Eisenhower's ghost...is it?

In the fourth book of the Capital Mysteries—an early chapter book mystery series featuring fun facts and famous sites from Washington, D.C.—KC's mom is getting married...to the President of the United States! KC wants the day to be perfect, but someone keeps leaking wedding secrets. They newspapers have even printed where the president and his bride are going on their honeymoon. To save the wedding, KC and Marshall have to track down the spy in the White House!

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.