Katharine Graham - Katharine Grahams Washington

A FTER the unflagging work she put into writing her autobiography, Personal History, and the excitement surrounding its publication, Kay Graham was eager to move on to other activities; she wasnt one to rest on her laurels. Another book seemed a possibility, but she had no interest in writing more about herself. As we talked about possible subjects, she kept coming back to Washington, the city she loved, and particularly what had changed and what had remained the same in the more than eighty years since 1917, the year she was born, which was also the year her parents first came to live there. Indeed, a frequent point of reference was the full and forthright diary her mother had kept from her first days in the city, filling in for Kay the Washington she herself was too young to know.

Slowly the idea of an anthology emergeda big collection of the best writing we could find that would reflect her own sense of Washington: its flavor, its history through her lifespan, its great characters, its great events. Her own library of Washington books was extensive, and her brilliant assistant and collaborator, Evelyn Small, who had been so crucial to the success of Personal History, set to work to track down countless other books and magazines and newspapers for all of us to poke through, looking for treasure. Kay immediately began reading what she herself had found and what Ev served up to her, pouncing on material here, rejecting it forcibly there. She knew what she liked, and she knew why.

Anthologies generally grow into their structure, but we agreed from the start that this one should gather itself around certain themes: Social Washington, President Watching, Mr. and Mrs. Smith Come to Washington, etc. She would write general introductions (there would be twelve sections in all), and shorter introductions to each of the hundred-plus pieces. And they would be personalindeed, they could only be personal, since she was a witness to so much that had happened in Washington, and was often a part of what had happened. Many of the writers, too, were friends of hers (Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Dean Acheson, the Alsop brothers, Henry Kissinger, Nancy Reagan, among others) or with whom she had been close when they worked for The Washington Post (Herblock, Meg Greenfield, Art Buchwald, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn). She and/or her parents had known all the presidents since Woodrow Wilson.

Her goal was to present her Washington, hence the title; this was never intended to be a policy book or a full history or a survey. She simply wanted to share her excitement about her city, her own fascination with it, through the best writing she could find. Early on, she decided that she couldnt and wouldnt try to cover all the basesthere were subjects that didnt seem to have stimulated first-rate writing, and those she would ignore. Nor did she want to present political analysis or extended biography. Not surprisingly, she found that on the whole, the past provided more interesting writing than the present, and she made no apology for representing the Harding or Coolidge or Roosevelt or Kennedy eras more fully than the Ford or Carter or Clinton years. (No doubt the best writing on those is yet to be done.)

At the time of her death, in July 2001, the book was unfinished. It had been structured, specific writers and passages had been chosen, and she had written many of the introductions and left notes on most of the others. And of course she had talked about the pieces with Ev Small, who completed anything and everything Kay had left undone.

I have never worked with a writer more generous to her collaborators than Kay Graham. She never ceased giving public credit to me and to Ev for Personal History, more, certainly, than I deserved; Ev deserved it all. And I know what Kay would have said about Evs contributions to this new book: that there would have been no book without her. To that I can testify. Evs superb research, her capacity for organization, her editorial intelligence, and most important, her profound understanding of, and sympathy for, Kays cast of mind are what brought Katharine Grahams Washington to final fruition. Where Kay hadnt actually written text, Ev was able, given her seventeen years experience of working with her, to piece together from notes, discussion, and intuition what was required. It was a labor of prodigious capability as well as a labor of love. The proof of her success, as anyone who knew Kay or read her earlier book will attest, is that what we have here is indisputably Katharine Grahams Washington.

Robert Gottlieb