Relationships
Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary
memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming
relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years
with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Four years before Nina
Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning
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
Supreme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that
discriminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional. In a time when
women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit
cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her
argument. That call launched a remarkable, 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 workplace. At the story’s heart is
one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through
personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the
devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew
her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s
beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of
shopping, as they instinctively understood 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. Dinners with Ruth also weaves
together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men
from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and
Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple
Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and
Antonin Scalia, and Nina’s own family—her father, the legendary violinist
Roman Totenberg, and her “best friends,” her sisters. Inspiring and
revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning
of friendship. Read more

 

Genre Biography Non-Fiction