Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York : A.A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1988.
Description
Though it is today the hub of international affairs and government, Washington, D.C. was once little more than a small Southern town that happened to host our nationally elected officials. Award-winning journalist David Brinkley remembers what it was like--how Washington awoke from its slumber and found itself with a war on its hands. Washington had to print the paper, alphabetize the bureaucracies, host the parties, pitch the propaganda, write the laws, launch the drives, draft the boys, hire the "government girls," and engage in an often hilarious administrative war of words, wit, and even wisdom.
User reviews
LibraryThing member EricCostello
Entertaining and acerbic look at Washington, D.C. in the 1939-1945 period. Brinkley was there for a portion of the time, from 1943 as a White House correspondent for NBC News. Much of what he didn't see first-hand comes from contemporary accounts and memories by those he interviewed. Congress does
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not come off at all well in this analysis, with the possible exception of Speaker Sam Rayburn. One interesting angle explored in the book is the massive bureaucratic muddle that engulfed the government as it went on to war, and how it was never really resolved. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1988
Physical description
xvi, 286 p.; 25 cm
ISBN
0394510259 / 9780394510255
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