Summary: Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships by Nina Totenberg

Recommendation

Over the course of her career, National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg has built a distinguished journalism portfolio and a family of friends she describes with insight and warmth, including fellow journalists Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer, and Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Lewis Powell and William Brennan, as well as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The author and Ginsburg began their careers in male-dominated fields at the same time. They connected when Totenburg interviewed Ginsburg for a story and embarked on a long friendship encompassing Ginsburg’s tenure as a Supreme Court justice. This engaging narrative covers many colorful personalities, Totenburg’s personal history with Ginsburg, and the importance of friendship and love.

Take-Aways

• The friendship between Nina Totenberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg started with the lawyer explaining why the 14th Amendment should cover equal protection for women.
• Totenberg and Ginsburg both encountered discrimination in their professions.
• The two women built a close friendship.
• The Senate approved Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1993.
• By 2010, two more female justices joined the court, changing the dynamics and making Ginsburg’s role more visible.
• Ginsburg’s health challenges made her more “steely and invincible.”

Summary

The friendship between Nina Totenberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg started with the lawyer explaining why the 14th Amendment should cover equal protection for women.

The last time in their 50 years of friendship that Nina Totenberg saw Ruth Bader Ginsburg, they shared their regular dinner of bouillabaisse at Totenberg’s home. Their relationship predated Totenberg’s fame as NPR’s legal affairs correspondent and Ginsburg’s appointment to the US Supreme Court.

Ginsburg met Totenberg when she sought clarity about a Supreme Court brief Ginsburg wrote for the ACLU about the Reed v. Reed case. Ginsburg asserted that a law automatically giving men preference over women as “state executors” was unconstitutional, because the 14th Amendment guarantees “equal protection under the law to all persons,” and this law discriminated against women. In 1971, the idea of women as “persons” was revolutionary, but the Supreme Court sided with Ginsburg’s brief and for the first time declared that the equal protection clause covers women.

“We were outsiders to the world in which we operated.”

Although women could vote, banks and employers limited their economic power. Even female partners in large law firms had difficulty getting a credit card or mortgage. Because employers paid pregnant women less or fired them, Ginsburg hid her pregnancy from her Rutgers University colleagues until she’d signed her teaching contract for the following year.

After their initial conversation, Totenberg continued to call the professor to ask her to explain the archaic language of legal briefs and the law.

Totenberg and Ginsburg both encountered discrimination in their professions.

The two women’s backgrounds shared some similarities, but they took different paths. Both had immigrant Jewish parents. Totenberg’s father, Roman, was a famous violinist, while Ginsburg’s father never completed high school.

Ginsburg grew up in a lower income part of Brooklyn. Her mother, who died when Ginsburg was a teen, expected only the highest grades from her daughter. Ginsburg seldom talked about her childhood. She went to Cornell on a scholarship, and tried to fit in as one of the girls. But she was different, which Marty Ginsburg understood. He was the first man who was interested in her intelligence and opinions. After they married, Ruth Ginsburg had a child and graduated from Columbia Law. She was at the top of the class, and one of the few women.

Totenberg dropped out of college to be a reporter. She got a job in Boston reporting for the “woman’s page.” She moved to another paper, where she covered everything from cops to courts. On her own time, Totenberg covered the 1968 New Hampshire presidential primary. Her clips helped her get a job at The National Observer (a weekly publication of Dow Jones) covering the US legislative and judicial branches. Totenberg won awards while being paid less than her male colleagues.

“Being taken seriously was a major struggle for women, particularly when we were young.”

Though tied for first in her law school class, Ginsburg found it difficult to get a job. Finally, a professor called an alumnus judge, telling him if he didn’t hire her, he’d never get another clerk from Columbia. After her clerkship, Ginsburg taught at Rutgers. Years later, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told Ginsburg that if a law firm had hired either of them, neither would be on the Supreme Court.

In 1975, Totenberg joined the program All Things Considered at National Public Radio (NPR), where she worked with journalists Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer, who also became her lifelong friends.

“Ruth and I knew each other long before other people were paying attention to either of us.”

When Ginsburg applied to become a judge for the DC Court of Appeals, Totenberg made an exception this one time and “stepped outside” her reportorial role, writing an op-ed supporting Ginsburg’s appointment. When Senator Orrin Hatch met with Ginsburg, she “wowed” him, and she won confirmation in June 1980.

The two women built a close friendship.

Totenberg and her husband, the much older Senator Floyd Haskell, met frequently with the Ginsburgs for dinner or cultural events in Washington, DC.

Totenberg covered an era of changes in the Supreme Court. Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to be the Court’s first woman member. The Senate unanimously approved Justice Antonin Scalia, Ginsburg’s DC Court of Appeals colleague. Their close friendship despite their differing views later inspired an opera.

Reagan next appointed Robert Bork, and that “changed everything,” according to the SCOTUSblog by Tom Goldstein, Totenberg’s former intern. Goldstein saw Bork’s selection as an attempt to shift the law drastically to the right. Liberal groups helped squelch Bork’s nomination. This contretemps led to today’s “ridiculous system,” in which nominees never say what they really think.

Totenberg saw a flaw in the confirmation process: It lacked complete background investigations. One judge, Douglas Ginsburg (no relation), withdrew his nomination after Totenberg found he’d smoked marijuana with his Harvard Law School students.

“The shared rhythm of our professional lives led us to be more personally in sync.”

Clarence Thomas’s 1991 nomination set off a firestorm, but he still became a justice. When then-Senator Joe Biden said at the hearing there would be no “personalizing this battle,” Totenberg smelled a story. She eventually unearthed the law professor Anita Hill, who said she would talk if Totenberg found a copy of the sworn affidavit detailing how Thomas had sexually harassed Hill. Totenberg interviewed Hill, breaking the story two days before the Senate vote. Hill’s Senate testimony garnered higher ratings than the World Series. The Senate confirmed Thomas with the thinnest margin in more than 100 years.

The next confirmation Totenberg covered was Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s.

The Senate approved Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1993.

Ginsburg wasn’t Bill Clinton’s first or second choice, but when he interviewed her, aides said he fell for her “hook, line and sinker.” When Ginsburg got the call that Clinton would nominate her, she was overjoyed. Totenberg temporarily distanced herself from Ginsburg because she had to report on her. She was concerned their friendship might change, but they saw more of each other than they previously had.

Ginsburg’s nomination won Senate approval in 1993, and she became the Court’s second female member that August. Although she differed from O’Connor in voice, stature and opinions, lawyers repeatedly mixed up their names. When O’Connor retired, leaving Ginsburg as the sole woman on the court, observers saw her demeanor toward the good old boys club change. She didn’t want to play their games.Ginsburg had close male friends who held differing political and legal views from her own. She was especially close to Scalia, John Paul Stevens and David Souter.

“Even as Scalia’s views became more conservative…their friendship never wavered.”

The following year, Ginsburg underwent surgery for colon cancer. Totenberg’s first husband had died, and she was dating Dr. David Reines, who became Ginsburg’s medical confidant. Ginsburg officiated at their wedding in November 2000. The night before, she had been in the hospital due to an ongoing, lifelong cancer complication. She never let on until after the wedding dinner, when Ginsburg asked Totenberg if it was okay if she left the party before anyone else.

“She was a master at stuffing everything down and trying to present her best face.”

Ten years after Ginsburg’s first bout with cancer, doctors found a tumor on her pancreas. During a court recess, Ginsburg had significant, painful surgery to remove the tumor and her spleen. She recovered, but doctors then diagnosed her husband with inoperable spinal cancer.

In June 2010, Marty Ginsburg died, leaving a note extolling the love and admiration he felt for his wife of more than 50 years.

By 2010, two more female justices joined the court, changing the dynamics and making Ginsburg’s role more visible.

Ginsburg held the senior spot among the Court’s liberals, which then included Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan. In 2013, when the court reviewed the Voting Rights Act, Ginsburg foretold what discriminatory states would do if released from the act’s requirements. That year, at age 80, Ginsburg became known as the “Notorious R.B.G.,” a name that first appeared on a Columbia University student’s blog.

“She understood that she had become an important role model for women – young and old.”

Ginsburg became the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex marriage. Even when she attended the opera in disguise, people gave her a standing ovation. Totenberg interviewed Ginsburg on public panels, often to sold-out audiences.

As The New York Times later revealed, President Barack Obama lunched with Ginsburg in July 2013, to hint that she should retire to allow another, younger Democratic appointment to the court. Ginsburg demurred. During these years, Totenberg and Reines often took Ginsburg to dinner, and invited her to parties and holiday celebrations. Because Ginsburg frequently worked until nearly dawn, they knew never to call her before noon.

At the end of the Court’s 2016 term, Ginsburg stepped out of her normal judicial role in several interviews. She indicated how detrimental to the country and the courts she thought Donald Trump would be as president. By the third interview, she called Trump “a faker.” Major newspapers criticized her, as did Trump on Twitter.

“I was shocked that she would make such statements publicly.”

Totenberg was a bit put out that Ginsburg hadn’t shared her thoughts with Totenberg on the record. Ginsburg “expressed regret” about making the comments, but not about what she said.

Steadily deflecting questions about her health and retirement, Ginsburg fractured several ribs in November 2018. When Totenberg publicly asked how she was, Ginsburg said her health was “fine.” Although Reines knew the truth, Totenberg didn’t. A CAT scan indicated Ginsburg had lung cancer. Reines helped schedule the surgery in 2019, telling Totenberg the night before. She wept for her friend.When the Court issued a press release the next day, Totenberg had prepared background information for a story. Ginsburg called her that night to explain she hadn’t wanted Totenberg to feel caught between their friendship and her job.

Until Ginsburg’s death, Totenberg opted for friendship over her job. She called it the “best choice” she ever made. Although doctors told the justice to cancel her engagements, Ginsburg rebooked them for later in the year.

“In that time I saw her incredible determination, her complete unwillingness to shirk or disappoint.”

Ginsburg acknowledged that her work kept her alive during that time. In August, she underwent radiation for another tumor. She kept up her schedule, including going to a play where she met her Saturday Night Live impersonator, Kate McKinnon.

Ginsburg’s health challenges made her more “steely and invincible.”

The last year of her life, Ginsburg fought to live until the 2020 presidential election, in spite of weekly medical issues. She worked without complaint or showing her pain. She hid her thinness with padded jackets and shawls, and wore crocheted gloves to hide the IV marks on her hands.

“I do not think that Ruth would have fought so hard to live if Trump were not president.”

When the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect, Totenberg’s house was Ginsburg’s only refuge other than her apartment. Because COVID-19 caused her to cancel her schedule and restricted her exposure, it likely prolonged her life. Ginsburg always chose Reines’s bouillabaisse over any other dish when she came to their scrubbed, sanitized house for dinner. Totenberg delivered entertaining tidbits of information as her husband cooked.

In the last two months of her life, Ginsburg knew she was unlikely to make it to the end of the year. After she returned from a hospital stay in September 2020, Totenberg and Reines brought the bouillabaisse to her. Ginsburg nodded off during dinner. The last time Totenberg saw Ginsburg alive was as Reines helped her to her room. Ginsburg died within a week, on the evening of the Jewish holy day Rosh Hashanah.

Ginsburg had two services, one at the Supreme Court and one at the Capitol. She was the only woman among the 34 people who’ve had that honor. However, Senator Mitch McConnell, who had cast one of the 96 votes approving her appointment, refused to allow the placing of her coffin in the Capitol Rotunda between the House and the Senate.

While people knew her for her strongly held beliefs, Ginsburg believed in reaching “common ground and consensus.” In her words, the Court might “rock the boat from time to time,” but it “couldn’t go too far beyond public opinion.”

About the Author

NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg has won numerous journalism awards, American Bar Association awards for excellence in legal reporting, and more than 24 honorary degrees.

Review

“Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships” by Nina Totenberg is a captivating and heartfelt account that explores the profound impact of friendships in our lives. Focusing on the author’s unique relationship with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, this memoir unveils a deep bond and the transformative power of their shared dinners.

Totenberg, a renowned journalist and a close friend of Ginsburg, provides readers with an intimate glimpse into the personal and professional life of this iconic figure. The book chronicles their regular dinners together, where they engaged in vibrant conversations that extended beyond legal matters. Through these shared meals, Totenberg beautifully illustrates the essence of their friendship and the invaluable role it played in both their lives.

One of the remarkable aspects of “Dinners with Ruth” is Totenberg’s ability to weave together personal anecdotes and pivotal moments from Ginsburg’s career. She masterfully captures Ginsburg’s brilliance, passion for justice, and unwavering dedication to the law. The book showcases the profound impact Ginsburg had on the legal landscape and the enduring legacy she left behind.

In addition to the engaging narrative, Totenberg’s writing style is both evocative and insightful. She skillfully balances storytelling with introspection, allowing readers to connect with the emotional depth of the experiences she shares. Totenberg’s prose is elegant and accessible, making “Dinners with Ruth” an engaging read for both legal enthusiasts and those interested in exploring the power of friendship.

The memoir also delves into the challenges and triumphs faced by both Totenberg and Ginsburg throughout their lives. Totenberg’s vulnerability shines through as she reflects on her own personal struggles and the ways in which her friendship with Ginsburg provided solace and strength. This introspection adds another layer of depth to the narrative, making it relatable and resonant.

Moreover, “Dinners with Ruth” is not just a memoir about two extraordinary women; it is a celebration of the lasting impact of friendships. Totenberg effectively conveys the profound influence that meaningful connections can have on our personal and professional growth. Through her storytelling, she highlights the importance of nurturing relationships, fostering intellectual engagement, and finding support in our closest companions.

While “Dinners with Ruth” primarily focuses on the friendship between Totenberg and Ginsburg, it also offers insights into the broader political and social landscape of the time. The book provides context to significant legal cases and societal changes, offering a comprehensive perspective on the events that shaped Ginsburg’s career and the impact she had on American society.

In conclusion, “Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships” by Nina Totenberg is a rich and compelling tribute to the enduring friendship between two extraordinary women. Totenberg’s writing is poignant and reflective, allowing readers to connect with the emotional depth of their bond. Through this memoir, Totenberg not only honors the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg but also reminds us of the transformative power of friendship in our own lives. It is a book that will resonate with readers long after they have turned the final page.