The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate - Hardcover

Williams, Marjorie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586483633 ISBN 13: 9781586483630

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

Review

"...offers many pleasures and surprises...this collection is a splendid memorial to an elegant prose stylist." -- The Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2005

"A master at capturing human spirit and character in print" -- Karen Algeo Krizman, Rocky Mountain News, November 11, 2005

"Her writing...stands out for what simmers just beneath, whether it's a passage of excavatory reporting or a personal, painful insight..." -- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, November 28, 2005

"Piercing perceptiveness about the messy human beings lying beneath the portentous personas of great Washington figures" -- David Brooks, New York Times, November 6, 2005

"Williams's journalistic gifts include her delicious use of detail, wicked humor and a psychological insight..." -- The Washington Post, November 17, 2005

... what this book reveals is a woman...cheated by fate, but facing reality unflinchingly and asserting personal honor despite it all. -- David Brooks, The New York Times, November 6, 2005

...combines peerless political anthropology with heartbreaking insight into the complexities of family life and her own struggle with cancer. -- Newsweek, November 21, 2005

A fitting tribute... [Williams was] a master at capturing human spirit and character...readers...simply looking for great writing won't be disappointed. -- The Rocky Mountain News, November 11, 2005

We'ree lucky to have this collection to remind us of what we'll be missing with Marjorie Williams gone. -- The Buffalo News, November 13, 2005

Williams is so knowing about Washingtons folkways...that readers will feel they are sitting down with a world-class political storyteller. -- The Buffalo News, November 13, 2005

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1586483633
• ISBN 13: 9781586483630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384