Reputation: Portraits in Power [Paperback]

In 2005,The Woman at the Washington Zoowas 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 theNew 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 scandal's blow to hisre-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.

Reputationilluminates our recent past through expertly drawn portraits of powerful -- and messily human -- figures.Marjorie Williamswas born in Princeton, N.J. in 1958 and died in Washington, D.C. in 2005. She is the author ofThe Woman at the Washington Zoo, aNew York Timesbestseller and winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Nonfiction Award. She is survived by her husband,Timothy Noah, a senior writer atSlate, and her children, Alice and Will.