Katharine Graham's Washington

A final legacy from Katharine Graham: an all-embracing, highly personal collection of writ-ings (more than one hundred articles, essays, and excerpts from books) about Washington, D.C. -- covering the period from 1917, the year of her birth, to early 2001, just before she died.Here are the president-watchers (including Will Rogers on Calvin Coolidge) . . . high points from insider memoirs (among them Dog Days at the White House by the presidential kennel keeper) . . . Washington moments vividly recalled -- by Henry Kissin-ger (on the end of the Nixon presidency), by FDR’s secretary (on Mrs. FDR), by Joseph W. Alsop, Ben Bradlee, David Brinkley, Dean Acheson, Harry Truman, Rosalynn Carter, and Nancy Reagan.Here is humor by Art Buchwald, P. J. O’Rourke, Russell Baker . . . social Washington, from royal visits to rival hostesses . . . traumatic moments in the city’s history -- including the news of Pearl Harbor and the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy . . . a loving appreciation of the city by David McCullough. Here, also, are charming period pieces, astute appraisals of how Washington works, and stimulating considerations of the not-always-happy realities of life in a place that during Mrs. Graham’s lifetime evolved from a provincial southern city to the capital of the world.Katharine Graham’s comments have the same acuity, humor, and candor that so charmed and moved the hundreds of thousands of readers of her Pulitzer Prize -- winning autobiography.