"Four years before Nina Totenberg started working at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prize-wining reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth's legal brief asking the supereme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that discriminated 'on the bases of sex' to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant and often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a nearly fifty-year friendship. Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the worlplace. At the story's heart is one special relationsip: Ruth and Nina saw each other through not only personal joys but also illness, loss, and widowhood. Ruth drew Nina out of grief during the devastating illness and eventual death of her first husband; twelve yearslater, Nina would reciptrocate when Ruth's beloved husband died. They shared a love of opera and shopping, as they instictively understoodo that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth's last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were 'reserved for Ruth' in Nina's house"--Publisher.
adult
Nina Totenberg.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-288) and index.
