HISTORIAN AT WORK
Douglas Brinkley’s new biography, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper-Collins), is heavy in more ways than one. Toting the 817-page (excluding maps and appendix) study of the life and achievements of our “naturalist president” Theodore Roosevelt is a great alternative to lifting weights.
Since a party in the author’s honor was scheduled on a stifling summer night when most guests would be vacationing – or pretending to be – guests were surprised to see Roosevelt House über-jammed thanks to Kimball Stroud’s orchestration.
Our mini-interview with the honoree:
How long did it take to write the book? “I started it in the early ’90s.”
How long does it take to read? “It doesn’t matter. It’s worth it.”
How much does it weigh? “About the same as a healthy hunk of petrified wood.”
Something odd you can tell us about T.R., the conservationist president? “He always had his pockets filled with nuts to feed the White House squirrels.”
WRITERS AT WORK
Washington author Kate Lehrer and poet/photographer Ginny Rosenblatt celebrated the release of New Yorker writer Elizabeth Hawes’ new book, Camus, A Romance (Grove Press) at Lehrer’s Cleveland Park home.
Kate and her husband, “Newshour” host Jim Lehrer, are both novelists themselves, and assiduously encourage their friends to indulge … in writing, that is.
The cast of writer-characters at the Camus-themed party included Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan, Colby and Gwen King, and “NewsHour” honcho Margaret Warner.
Future authors included White House counsel Greg Craig, who could surely muster a memoir after quarterbacking President Bill Clinton’s legal battle against impeachment. Imagine the science fiction novel that bio-med and health policy expert Dr. Peter Budetti could incubate.
Lest the summer air give rise to too much fantasy, Barbara Meade, co-owner of Politics & Prose, was there to provide a reality check in this era of shrinking sales and canceled publishers’ lists: Keep your day job.
UNFLAPPABLE HOST
If Katharine Weymouth’s “Summer Whites Party” co-hosted by Goli Sheikoleslami, Molly Elkin, and Ivan Wasserman, was any indication of how the Washington Post publisher is surviving the flap about her aborted “salon” gatherings, you’d have to give her a thumbs-up. She showed no visible signs of stress.
Harry Jaffe, longtime inside-the-Post chronicler at the Washingtonian, appeared to have gotten it right when he noted last year that, “The woman seems unflappable.”
“I’ve been up since 5:55 a.m. and going nonstop,” Weymouth said. “Got the three kids up. Put drops in the eyes of Red, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Fed the kids. Made lunches for the kids. Attempted to work out. Got two to the bus stop and the youngest to day camp at Beauvoir.”
Jaffe may be on to something.
