REPUTATION Portraits in Power MARJORIE WILLIAMS EDITED BY TIMOTHY NOAH

"Where is Marjorie Williams when we need her? Surely we could have used her shrewd eye and incisive voice this week, amid so much congressional posturing, not to mention the theatrics of the campaign debates...."Reputation" provides wonderful sketches, superb examples of a silky stylist at the top of her art. If I had time enough or treasure I would hand a copy to every freshman journalism student and say: Make sure this genre does not die amid a flurry of podcasts and Twitters, and while you're at it look up Lytton Strachey -- in the library, not on Wikipedia."
--The Wall Street Journal

"[Reputation] makes us long for [Marjorie's] powers of observation, reminds us that a writer can make us see the world in an entirely new way if we only gaze from different angles."
--The Chicago Tribune

"Williams observes her subjects with a winning mix of cynicism and compassion, humor and wisdom ... Reading through this brilliant collection brings on a feeling of loss ... Her essay on Sarah Palin would have been the stuff of legend."
--J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times Book Review

"No matter who is elected, the president must contend with those permanently in power: No one ever portrayed such people better than the late Marjorie Williams, as this second collection of her work ... vividly shows."
-Harvard Magazine

"The posthumous collection shows why the independent-minded journalist was one of our best guides through Washington's paths of power."
-Los Angeles Times

Marjorie is "a writer's writer ... wry, mischievous, a social observer on whom nothing in the passing scene was lost ... The Williams profile combines psychological, political, and anthropological observation in just the right, reader-satisfying measure ... Williams earns that favorite compliment of nonfiction writers: her descriptive details are 'novelistic' ... In Williams' work, real people, like characters in good novels, got the clear-eyed treatment, but they were also granted a context for their flaws, and the grace of understanding."
-Washington Monthly

PAPERBACK
ISBN 978-158648-771-3
Pub date: 10/06/09
Price: $14.95/18.95 Canada
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
320 pages
Carton Quantity: 18
Journalism, Politics
Selling Territory: W
Pub history: 978-158648-679-2