Reputation: Portraits in Power - Tapa dura

Shelf Awareness, October 22, 2008 "Marjorie Williams's writing displays the effortless grace of Tiger Woods's golf swing. Sadly her death from cancer in 2005 at the age of 47 cut short a stellar career. Now her husband, writer Timothy Noah, has assembled 12 of her sparkling political profiles as a welcome companion to an earlier collection, The Woman at the Washington Zoo. It's impossible to read these insightful portraits without mingled feelings of admiration and loss." David Shribman, Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2008 "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." Buffalo News, October 19, 2008 "Timeless ... sublime ... Williams' profiles, known for their fearlessness and wicked humor if not for their mercy, are always elegantly written and pitch-perfect ... She simply sees better than anyone and is unafraid to tell exactly what she sees." Boston Globe, October 24, 2008 "As it happens, 'Boogie Man' appears at the same time as the late Marjorie Williams's book of Washington profiles, 'Reputation.' Williams's portrait of Atwater is both far more nuanced, and ultimately far more damning, than the documentary. Stacking the deck even against a cardsharp, as Williams knew, is still stacking the deck." David Shribman, "Wall Street Journal," October 3, 2008 "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." "Buffalo News," October 19, 2008 "Timeless ... sublime ... Williams' profiles, known for their fearlessness and wicked humor if not for their mercy, are always elegantly written and pitch-perfect ... She simply sees better than anyone and is unafraid to tell exactly what she sees." "Boston Globe," October 24, 2008 "As it happens, 'Boogie Man' appears at the same time as the late Marjorie Williams's book of Washington profiles, 'Reputation.' Williams's portrait of Atwater is both far more nuanced, and ultimately far more damning, than the documentary. Stacking the deck even against a cardsharp, as Williams knew, is still stacking the deck." "Shelf Awareness," October 22, 2008 "Marjorie Williams's writing displays the effortless grace of Tiger Woods's golf swing. Sadly her death from cancer in 2005 at the age of 47 cut short a stellar career. Now her husband, writer Timothy Noah, has assembled 12 of her sparkling political profiles as a welcome companion to an earlier collection, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo." It's impossible to read these insightful portraits without mingled feelings of admiration and loss." "Harvard Magazine," November/December issue "No matter who is elected, the president must contend with those permanently in power: No one ever portrayed such people better than the late Mar

In 2005, The Woman at the Washington Zoo was published to major critical acclaim. The late Marjorie Williams possessed a special voice, one capable not just of canny political observations but of tenderness and bracing intimacy, observed the New York Times Book Review. Now, in a collection of profiles with the richness of short fiction, Williams limns the personalities that dominated politics and the media during the final years of the twentieth century. In these pages, Clark Clifford grieves in his laborious baritone a bank scandals blow to his re-pu-taaaaaay-shun. Lee Atwater likens himself to Ulysses and pleads, Tah me to the mast! Patricia Duff sheds precipitous tears over her divorce from Ronald Perelman, resembling afterwards a garden refreshed by spring rain. Reputation illuminates our recent past through expertly drawn portraits of powerful- and messily human-figures.