Washington or My Day

Washington

Author: Meg Greenfield

With Washington, the illustrious longtime editorial page editor of The Washington Post wrote an instant classic, a sociology of Washington, D.C., that is as wise as it is wry. Greenfield, a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, wrote the book secretly in the final two years of her life. She told her literary executor, presidential historian Michael Beschloss, of her work and he has written an afterword telling the story of how the book came into being. Greenfield's close friend and employer, the late Katharine Graham, contributed a moving and personal foreword. Greenfield came to Washington in 1961, at the beginning of the Kennedy administration and joined The Washington Post in 1968. Her editorials at the Post and her columns in Newsweek, were universally admired in Washington for their insight and style. In this, her first book, Greenfield provides a portrait of the U.S. capital at the end of the American century. It is an eccentric, tribal, provincial place where the primary currency is power. For all the scandal and politics of Washington, its real culture is surprisingly little known. Meg Greenfield explains the place with an insider's knowledge and an observer's cool perspective.

New York Times Book Review - Adam Clymer

What Greenfield has left us...is something very different from a traditional memoir. It's a new way of looking at a flawed Washington, one that is scathing in import if not in tone, a useful framework even to those who think of government people as more real, more human and even more truthful than she does.

Publishers Weekly

Arriving in Washington on the Kennedy wave in 1961, Greenfield went on to journalistic renown as a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer at the Washington Post (taking over the page's editorship in 1979) and as a Newsweek columnist. In this wry analysis of Beltway moving and shaking, Greenfield (no relation to CNN's Jeff Greenfield) likens political life in the nation's capital to a "stunted, high-schoolish social structure" born out of isolation from the rest of the world and pervasive insecurities and dreads. In chapters on "Mavericks and Image-Makers," "Women and Children" and other players front- and backstage, Greenfield, who died of cancer in 1999 in her late 60s, brilliantly lays bare 40 years of the methods and foibles of the power elite and those who cover them. This is no tell-all scandal sheet (Washington's pervasive sexual affairs have a "biff-bam, backseat-of-your-father's Chevy quality") or the work of a "pop sociology scribe," but neither is it a lament for halcyon days. As the foreword from Post publisher Katharine Graham and afterword by historian and PBS commentator Michael Beschloss make clear, Greenfield, who wrote the book in secret and left it at her death, never lost her "principles, detachment or individual human qualities." Readers will find Greenfield's in-the-know frankness irresistible whatever their party affiliations the mark of great journalism. (Apr. 29) Forecast: Both sides of the aisle of the eponymous city will read this book, and it will certainly be a nostalgia stoker for talking heads on the Sunday morning after its release. Major review attention and the book's inimitably great writing should lead to strong sales nationwide. Oddly, it's Greenfield's first book, though a collection of her columns is in the works. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Over her 40-year career as a journalist for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Greenfield thought deeply about how the city of Washington and those within it function. In the months before she died in 1999, she quietly (and secretly) began to gather her reflections into a manuscript; friends completed and edited this work after her death. Washington is not an easy read. Greenfield's sentences are sometimes as complex as her thoughts and her references will often be obscure to YA readers. Neither do its chapters separate easily. The work stands as a whole; its power is in the sweeping tableau Greenfield skillfully paints of the social, political and ethical dimensions of our capital city. While she is sometimes delightfully irreverent (one chapter on how the city works is called "A Night at the Opera"), Greenfield is most valuable for her insightful comments on the role of the journalist and the role of the politician in our current government. Recommended for advanced students. Category: Current Topics. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students and adults. 2002, Perseus, Public Affairs, 241p. index., Moore; Brookline, MA

Library Journal

Greenfield, editor of the editorial/opinion pages of the Washington Post until her death in 1999, left behind this jeremiad-cum-memoir, in which she describes the Washington political scene as "high school at its most dangerously deranged." She mercilessly derides the "hall monitors" and prodigies with whom she claims Washington is rife, ever fearful of losing their jobs because of a misspoken word. In order to defend against no-holds-barred press coverage, politicians now develop, according to Greenfield, a completely fabricated persona, generating formulaic exchanges with journalists that lead to a well-founded distrust of government institutions and the press; her odd contention is that Washington worked better in the past. A denizen of Washington for close to four decades, she has many tales to tell. Katharine Graham and Michael Beschloss, both good friends, supply a warm foreword and a warm afterword, respectively. Washington junkies will love this acerbic appraisal by a woman who was certainly in the know. Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Written in secret before her death in 1999, Greenfield's (editor, , and Pulitzer Prize winner) narrative outlines the process of competitive image projection as it erodes the moral and personal sense of politicians and their journalistic counterparts. She identifies the principal species of the Washington DC subculture and recounts the history she saw unfold. Attention is given to the hostility toward professional women, the fall of the Southern oligarchy, the careers of eight Presidents (Kennedy to Clinton), and even occasional heroics. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962

Author: Eleanor Roosevelt

Recently named "Woman of the Century" in a survey conducted by the National Women's Hall of Fame, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote her hugely popular syndicated column "My Day" for over a quarter of that century, from 1936 to 1962. This collection brings together for the first time in a single volume the most memorable of those columns, written with singular wit, elegance, compassion, and insight—everything from her personal perspectives on the New Deal and World War II to the painstaking diplomacy required of her as chair of the United Nations Committee on Human Rights after the war to the joys of gardening at her beloved Hyde Park home.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

My Day reminds us how great a woman she was.