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. The late Graham's posthumous legacy is a delightful and insightful anthology of writings on the city that formed so much of her personality and her professional life. Drawing on her personal collection of writings, Graham offers a broad array of opinions and observations in more than 100 articles and essays from humorists, journalists, novelists, socialites, and political luminaries and their wives--many of them personal friends. The book is arranged by theme--social Washington, president watching, wartime Washington--with Graham setting the scene and tone beforehand, using insights gleaned from her mother's diary for the period pieces. Will Rogers offers insights on Calvin Coolidge, Barbara Howar recalls a falling out with the Lyndon Johnsons, Henry Kissinger recalls the end of the Nixon presidency, and Eugene Robinson offers a look at the black Washington tourists rarely see. It's all inside Washington, sharp, witty, and carefully chosen to convey the city's atmosphere and personality and Graham's own interests in the people and the politics--social and governmental. A worthy follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, Personal History (1997). Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved cy 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 Ken Katharine Graham served as the publisher of the Washington Post from 1969 to 1979, piloting the paper through the crises of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, and as the president and chairman of the Washington Post Company for much longer. In 1998 she won a Pulitzer Prize for her best-selling autobiography, Personal History . She died at the age of eighty-four in July 2001. Washington Overview The Washington experience with its bigness and its novelty ends in a deep, grateful happiness. -my mother , Agnes Ernst Meyer, from her diary Mother was right: Washington is indeed a big experience. This is a place where novelty is nothing new. As Isabel Anderson, a social light here from 1897 to 1919, wrote in her book, Presidents and Pies, "In Washington there is always something new under the sun." So how does one begin to tackle a topic as big as Washington? My friend Stewart Alsop once wrote that, after years of observing Washington, he "understood why John Gunther had never written Inside Washington, although he at one time firmly intended to do so. There are just too many Washingtons to get inside of." Clearly, this city cannot be reduced to any single dimension. During the New Deal, FDR, as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration,