Where:
WBUR CitySpace
890 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215
Admission:
$15
Categories:
History, Social Good, Virtual
Event website:
https://www.wbur.org/events/791761/stranger-at-the-gate-documentary-screening-and-conversation
Here & Now co-host Robin Young moderates a conversation with NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg about her new book, “Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships.”
Copies of “Dinners with Ruth" will be available to purchase from our bookstore partner Brookline Booksmith.
CitySpace Tickets
Premiere: $25.00
General: $15.00
Student: $5.00
Virtual Tickets
$5.00 (only one ticket needed per household)
Ways To Save
WBUR Sustainers save $5.00 on general and virtual tickets and WBUR Members save $5.00 on general tickets to this event online or at the door with your Membership card.
To apply the discount to your ticket purchase online, you’ll need to enter a promo code. You can get your code by emailing [email protected].
Registrants may be contacted by CitySpace about this or future events.
About “Dinners with Ruth”
Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship.
Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth” in Nina’s house.
“Dinners with Ruth” also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina’s own family—her father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her “best friends,” her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, “Dinners with Ruth” is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.
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