Washington - Hardcover
Narrated in Greenfield's unforgettable voice, created in secret before her death in 1999, hidden from almost all of her friends and family, Washington is an exploration of a subculture that is both fabled and notorious. Like an anthropologist, Greenfield uses her famous wit, her eye for detail, and her understanding of how political people behave to show us why so many Americans hate Washington, D.C. - and how some who live there manage, despite all the obstacles, to do some good.
Greenfield identifies the principal species in the Washington subculture, using terms that will immediately become part of our political language - the good child, the head kid, the prodigy, the protege, the maverick, the image-maker. She shows us the Washington history she saw close-up - the hostility to professional women, the fall of the Southern oligarchy, eight Presidents (John Kennedy to Bill Clinton) and some surprising heroes.
Washington is a primer for those who wonder what life inside the capital is really like. It is also a window on the extraordinary, elusive woman who wrote it. Adorned with anecdotes and observations from her forty years near the center of power, the book shows us that, while functioning as one of the leading journalists of her time, Meg Greenfield managed to remain a human being.
Greenfield identifies the principal species in the Washington subculture, using terms that will immediately become part of our political language - the good child, the head kid, the prodigy, the protege, the maverick, the image-maker. She shows us the Washington history she saw close-up - the hostility to professional women, the fall of the Southern oligarchy, eight Presidents (John Kennedy to Bill Clinton) and some surprising heroes.
Washington is a primer for those who wonder what life inside the capital is really like. It is also a window on the extraordinary, elusive woman who wrote it. Adorned with anecdotes and observations from her forty years near the center of power, the book shows us that, while functioning as one of the leading journalists of her time, Meg Greenfield managed to remain a human being.
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Review:
Meg Greenfield is one of the legends of Washington, D.C. For more than three decades as a columnist and editor, writes Katharine Graham in a loving foreword, "she helped create the institutional voice of the Washington Post." This book, written secretly in the final two years of her life and now published posthumously, is a wonderfully incisive piece of work. Greenfield really understood the city she came to settle in, and she really understood people. Her observations are sharp and profound:
About the Author:
Public people almost eagerly dehumanize themselves. They allow the markings of region, family, class, individual character, and, generally, personhood that they once possessed to be leached away. At the same time, they construct a new public self that often does terrible damage to what remains of the genuine person. That is not because people here are bad or set out in the first place to become phonies, but rather because high politics in the city seems to reward the transformation. It is regarded as a measure of competence and required as a condition of success.She has plenty to say about the media: "Journalists who persist in regarding themselves as thoroughly clean and the world around them as thoroughly dirty are guilty of more than misplaced moral vanity. They are also in danger of rendering themselves incapable of plausibly explaining what they are covering--except as further implied evidence of their own virtue." Greenfield was a powerful Washingtonian, but like so many Washingtonians--not least the elected lawmakers--she came from somewhere else (in her case, Seattle). In many ways, this book is a guide to keeping from going native, or, as historian Michael Beschloss nicely puts in an afterword, "how to live at the center of political and journalistic influence in Washington without losing your principles, detachment, or individual human qualities." Washington is part memoir, but mostly observation by a keen watcher and analysis by an acute mind. It stands to become a small classic on life in America's capital and, in a way, life anywhere. --John J. Miller
Meg Greenfield, who died in 1999, was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. She wrote this book secretly in the final two years of her life, but 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 to be. Ms. Greenfield's close friend and longtime employer, Katharine Graham, wrote the foreword.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherG K Hall & Co
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0783895909
- ISBN 13 9780783895901
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages344
- Rating
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