Washington

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Longtime Washington Post editorial page editor Meg Greenfield was the ultimate Washington insider. She came to the capital at the same time as the Kennedy administration and started at the Post in 1968, where she was universally acclaimed for her editorial wit and savvy. Washington is a book Greenfield worked on during the last two years of her life; she told her literary executor, historian Michael Beschloss, what she was up to, and he has contributed a thoughtful afterword on the book's creation.

In Washington, Greenfield takes the reader inside the corridors of power and reveals the true nature of the culture there. From her perspective, it's like a huge high school, where everyone is completely self-absorbed and status-seeking. Some are teacher's pets, some are class clowns, but all are fiercely competitive. It takes an insider like Meg Greenfield to give us the true story of what goes on in the nation's nerve center.

Adam Clymer

What Greenfield has left us...is something very different from a traditional memoir. It's a new way of looking at a flawed Washington, one that is scathing in import if not in tone, a useful framework even to those who think of government people as more real, more human and even more truthful than she does.
— New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Arriving in Washington on the Kennedy wave in 1961, Greenfield went on to journalistic renown as a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer at the Washington Post (taking over the page's editorship in 1979) and as a Newsweek columnist. In this wry analysis of Beltway moving and shaking, Greenfield (no relation to CNN's Jeff Greenfield) likens political life in the nation's capital to a "stunted, high-schoolish social structure" born out of isolation from the rest of the world and pervasive insecurities and dreads. In chapters on "Mavericks and Image-Makers," "Women and Children" and other players front- and backstage, Greenfield, who died of cancer in 1999 in her late 60s, brilliantly lays bare 40 years of the methods and foibles of the power elite and those who cover them. This is no tell-all scandal sheet (Washington's pervasive sexual affairs have a "biff-bam, backseat-of-your-father's Chevy quality") or the work of a "pop sociology scribe," but neither is it a lament for halcyon days. As the foreword from Post publisher Katharine Graham and afterword by historian and PBS commentator Michael Beschloss make clear, Greenfield, who wrote the book in secret and left it at her death, never lost her "principles, detachment or individual human qualities." Readers will find Greenfield's in-the-know frankness irresistible whatever their party affiliations the mark of great journalism. (Apr. 29) Forecast: Both sides of the aisle of the eponymous city will read this book, and it will certainly be a nostalgia stoker for talking heads on the Sunday morning after its release. Major review attention and the book's inimitably great writing should lead to strong sales nationwide. Oddly, it's Greenfield's first book, though a collection of her columns is in the works. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Over her 40-year career as a journalist for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Greenfield thought deeply about how the city of Washington and those within it function. In the months before she died in 1999, she quietly (and secretly) began to gather her reflections into a manuscript; friends completed and edited this work after her death. Washington is not an easy read. Greenfield's sentences are sometimes as complex as her thoughts and her references will often be obscure to YA readers. Neither do its chapters separate easily. The work stands as a whole; its power is in the sweeping tableau Greenfield skillfully paints of the social, political and ethical dimensions of our capital city. While she is sometimes delightfully irreverent (one chapter on how the city works is called "A Night at the Opera"), Greenfield is most valuable for her insightful comments on the role of the journalist and the role of the politician in our current government. Recommended for advanced students. Category: Current Topics. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students and adults. 2002, Perseus, Public Affairs, 241p. index., Moore; Brookline, MA

Library Journal

Greenfield, editor of the editorial/opinion pages of the Washington Post until her death in 1999, left behind this jeremiad-cum-memoir, in which she describes the Washington political scene as "high school at its most dangerously deranged." She mercilessly derides the "hall monitors" and prodigies with whom she claims Washington is rife, ever fearful of losing their jobs because of a misspoken word. In order to defend against no-holds-barred press coverage, politicians now develop, according to Greenfield, a completely fabricated persona, generating formulaic exchanges with journalists that lead to a well-founded distrust of government institutions and the press; her odd contention is that Washington worked better in the past. A denizen of Washington for close to four decades, she has many tales to tell. Katharine Graham and Michael Beschloss, both good friends, supply a warm foreword and a warm afterword, respectively. Washington junkies will love this acerbic appraisal by a woman who was certainly in the know. Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Written in secret before her death in 1999, Greenfield's (editor, , and Pulitzer Prize winner) narrative outlines the process of competitive image projection as it erodes the moral and personal sense of politicians and their journalistic counterparts. She identifies the principal species of the Washington DC subculture and recounts the history she saw unfold. Attention is given to the hostility toward professional women, the fall of the Southern oligarchy, the careers of eight Presidents (Kennedy to Clinton), and even occasional heroics. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)