Dinners with Ruth

Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth BaderGinsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth's legal brief, asking theSupreme 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 forfuture generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story's heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina's first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth's beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to betaken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth's last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were ''reserved for Ruth'' in Nina'shouse.