very important because it's not about alexandria, virginia. it's about a period in history when the district of columbia included parts of what's now virginia. what i wanted to do was look at a 50 year time period and give a sense of what alexandria became part of the district of columbia, what went wrong and why it left. one the things i wanted to do with the book is give people a sense of what life was like in this time period. firefighting was very differently in this time period. crime was very different. slavery played a crucial role in the business world of this time period. po...