In a Bethesda Bookstore, the Prints of Propaganda

The son of a Norwegian immigrant, Moursund grew up in Washington and graduated from Wilson High School in 1962. He studied at Duke University but dropped out for a year to work as a SNCC volunteer in the civil rights movement. On July 12, 1963, Moursund's picture appeared on the front page of the New York Times -- he was shown lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, Md., after being beaten by white bigots for trying to desegregate a restaurant called the Dizzyland.

"They kicked the hell out of us and dumped us on the sidewalk," he recalls.

After he finally graduated in 1967, Moursund drove a cab in Washington, then worked as an assistant to maverick journalist I.F. Stone, all the while spending his nights pursuing his life's great passion -- pool hustling.

In 1979 he began working as a used-book buyer for a local store. In 1984, he founded his own bookshop, first in Georgetown, then in Bethesda. Two years ago he started making and selling his posters.

Smiling, Moursund pulls out the first poster he ever made. It's the cover of a communist children's book, "Teachings of Marx for Girls and Boys," with photos of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. It was published in the '30s, he says, by an Episcopal bishop from Kansas who became a communist nicknamed the Red Bishop.

Moursund finds the cover hilarious. "There's something so sublime about that," he says, laughing.

The message of his posters, he says, is that American history is far more varied than most people realize. "The more you see, the more you realize how complex America is," he says. Then he smiles. "Of course, sometimes the complexity is just the average of the nuts on both sides."

He pulls out another poster. It's the cover of a magazine called Japan Times Weekly with a photo of Japanese fighter planes zooming through the clouds. The date is Dec. 18, 1941.

"That's about a week after Pearl Harbor," Moursund says. "And I love the understated headline."

The headline, printed in small, subdued type, is this: "Weak Links in American Navy."

"It's great!" Moursund says, then he bursts out laughing.