Note: November Book Club will meet in person. See details below.
Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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 Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. 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. 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 Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth” in Nina’s house.
Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues, her beloved husbands, multiple Supreme Court Justices, and Nina’s own family. Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.
Meeting Location. The November Book Club will gather in the meeting room of RiverPlace Apartments, located at 1 RiverPlace Dr., La Crosse, which is adjacent to International Friendship Gardens. Participants may enter through the front entrance. It is suggested that participants may wish to park in the Friendship Gardens parking lot in back of the apartments,
Registration. Since this meeting is indoors and therefore not subject to weather restrictions, there will be no back-up Zoom link. Although registration for this in-person meeting will not be required, participants are encouraged to register if they wish to receive an event reminder as well as any potential updates to meeting information.