Book Report: Nina and RBG.

Book Report
Being a long time NPR listener, I first remember fearing the author of this biography reporting on the Iran/Contra controversy during the Reagan Administration. She and her NPR colleague Daniel Schorr reported on this event. She inappropriately described an Episcopal priest testifying at the hearing as a reverend “wearing his priest uniform with his collar turned around” as his clergy’s clerical garb. But later she became known as a credible reporter of the Supreme Court for National Public Radio and still is today. The book mentions she befriended Ruth Bater Ginsberg and became close friends years before RBG was nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court.
The title is “Dinners with Ruth; Memoir on powers of friendship by Nina Totenberg, biography bestseller, 2022.
Library of Congress annotation:
“Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prize-winning 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.
Call the library or download to your Kendal or iPhone. If you obtain the audiobook, it is read by the author. Read it or listen. My personal thoughts are it’s a good book and you’ll like it.