Secret Baltimore: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure - Paperback

by Evan Balkan (Author)

Front Jacket

Where in Baltimore did the most decorated female spy in American history go to school? Why are Dorothy Parker's ashes sitting in a memorial garden at the old NAACP headquarters? And which notorious gangster planted cherry trees in Charm City that are still in bloom today? You'll find answers to the questions you didn't even know you had in Secret Baltimore: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.

Learn about the connection between the Frank Zappa statue in front of the Enoch Pratt and free-thinkers in Lithuania, or about the blind soccer team in Baltimore with a national championship title. From Lamar Jackson's favorite dessert spot to where Edgar Allan Poe took his last steps and from the childhood home of the nation's first African-American Supreme Court Justice to a burlesque bar that inspired a Paul Newman movie, you'll find no shortage of weird, wonderful, and obscure in Maryland's largest city.

Local writer and professor Evan Balkan provides your expert introduction to the poets, gangsters, abolitionists, domestic terrorists, singers, assassins, athletes, and everyone in between who have called his city home. With his book as your guide, you'll get to know an entirely new side of Charm City.

Author Biography

Evan Balkan has published three novels, seven books of nonfiction, and many essays and short stories. He is a co-writer for the television series Wayward Girls, and his screenplays have won multiple awards and fellowships. He coordinates the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore County, where he runs the creative writing program and is an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University. He holds degrees from Towson, George Mason, and Johns Hopkins and has served as a guest lecturer at Yale, Bryn Mawr, and many other institutions.