First published 2022
Nina Totenberg opens her memoir with the phone call that changed everything. In 1971, she was a reporter for The National Observer when she dialed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to ask about a legal brief challenging sex discrimination. That conversation sparked a friendship that would span nearly five decades. Totenberg traces their relationship from those early days when women faced firing for pregnancy and couldn't secure credit cards in their own names, through their rise as trailblazers in law and journalism. She reveals how they supported each other through personal tragedies, sharing a love of opera and shopping while understanding that the right clothes served as armor in male dominated workplaces. The book captures their Saturday dinners during Ruth's final year, when those evenings became sacred ritual. Totenberg also portraits other significant figures from her life, including NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer, Supreme Court Justices like Antonin Scalia and Lewis Powell, and her violinist father Roman Totenberg. This memoir celebrates the transformative power of female friendship.
Genres: friendship, american, feminism, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, journalism, law
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, inspirational
Period: 1971, 20th-century, 21st-century
320 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster