Ever wonder about the books on the shelf behind the podium during House press conferences?

Many lawmakers hold their pressers in the House Radio and Television Gallery in the Capitol, a tiny room pumped with chilly air conditioning and with a four-shelf backdrop of scholarly-seeming books.

Sprinkled in with law texts are some odd titles. Among them:

-- "Diseases of the Stomach"

-- "The Red and the Black"

-- "Coromandel!"

-- Christina Bellantoni, Capitol Hill correspondent, The Washington Times