Synopses & Reviews
One of Washington's finest writers on people, politics, and life collected for the first time.
Marjorie Williams knew Washington from top to bottom. Beloved for her sharp analysis, elegant prose, and exceptional ability to intuit character, Williams wrote political profiles for the Washington Post and Vanity Fair that came to be considered the final word on the capital's most powerful figures. Her accounts of playing ping-pong with Richard Darman, of Barbara Bush's stepmother quaking with fear at the mere thought of angering the First Lady, and of Bill Clinton angrily telling Al Gore why he failed to win the presidency to name just three treasures collected here open a window on a seldom-glimpsed human reality behind Washington's determinedly blank façade.
Williams also penned a weekly column for the Post's op-ed page and epistolary book reviews for the online magazine Slate. Her essays for these and other publications tackled subjects ranging from politics to parenthood. During the last years of her life, she wrote about her own mortality as she battled liver cancer, using this harrowing experience to illuminate larger points about the nature of power and the randomness of life.
Marjorie Williams was a woman in a man's town, an outsider reporting on the political elite. She was, like the narrator in Randall Jarrell's classic poem, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo," an observer of a strange and exotic culture. This splendid collection at once insightful, funny, and sad digs into the psyche of the nation's capital, revealing not only the hidden selves of the people that run it, but the messy lives that the rest of us lead.
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"Somewhat dated but a nonetheless rich collection framing the kinds of people, fair and foul, destined to make Washington tick." Kirkus Reviews
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"This book is required reading for all students of politics because Williams reveals the human motivations behind the narrative dramas that played out in the nation's capital during the last 15 years." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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"For those who have never read Williams' work, The Woman at the Washington Zoo offers many pleasures and surprises. For those already familiar with her writing, this collection is a splendid memorial to an elegant prose stylist." Los Angeles Times
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"Williams's journalistic gifts include her delicious use of detail, wicked humor and a psychological insight so telling it raises the question of why anyone ever agreed to submit to her scrutiny." The Washington Post
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"At first glance, the appeal of The Woman at the Washington Zoo seems limited to those who were familiar with Williams before her death. But readers who are simply looking for great writing won't be disappointed." Rocky Mountain News
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"[C]ombines peerless political anthropology with heartbreaking insight into the complexities of family life and her own struggle with cancer." Newsweek
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"What a tragedy that this superb writer and woman is no longer with us, but how lucky we are that she left us these marvelous writings. This is a book to treasure, as we did her." Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You For Smoking
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"Brilliant and unusual....[I]ndispensable." Meghan O'Rourke, Slate
Synopsis
One of Washington's finest writers on people, politics, and life collected for the first time.
About the Author
Marjorie Williams was born in Princeton, NJ in 1958 and died in 2005. She is survived by her husband, Timothy Noah, senior writer at Slate, who edited this volume, and her children, Alice and Will.