The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books (36 page)

Finally, I would like to acknowledge my present hometown of Washington, D.C. Although the city is defined mainly by its politics and the presence of its most temporary residents, the policy makers, I have come to appreciate it for very different reasons, ones that have been essential to the writing of this book. The three National Endowments—for Democracy, the Arts and the Humanities—to my mind embody the real spirit of D.C. I have enjoyed tracing American history through the city’s historical monuments and observing how they blend in with and complement the great cultural, civic, and scientific institutions: the Library of Congress, the Folger Theatre and Folger Shakespeare Library, the Smithsonian museums, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and the Kennedy Center— all enduring monuments to a different kind of civic patriotism, testaments to a love and appreciation not just of American history and culture but of the irreversible way it is linked to the rest of the world.