Alexander-Robey-Shepherd

Alexander Robey Shepherd: The Man Who Built the Nation’s Capital

alexander-robey-shepherdBy John P. Richardson ’60. Ohio University Press, September 2016. Available on Amazon. John P. Richardson gives us the first full-length biography of his subject, who as Washington, D.C.’s, public works czar (1871–74) built the infrastructure of the nation’s capital in a few frenetic years after the Civil War. The story of Shepherd is also the story of his hometown after that cataclysm, which left the city with churned-up streets, stripped of its trees, and exhausted.