{"product_id":"our-washington-dc-americas-hometown-in-transition-9781958861585","title":"Our Washington, DC: America's Hometown in Transition","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFeaturing stories by: Amy Argetsinger, Leon Dash, Eddie Dean, David Finkel, Marc Fisher, Linda Greenhouse, Walt Harrington, Wil Haygood, Philip Kennicott, Howard Means, Luke Mullins, Maureen Orth, John Pekkanen, David Remnick, James \"Scotty\" Barrett Reston, Roxanne Roberts, and Josh Swiller.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLike many residents of our nation's capital, Susan Sheehan is an accidental Washingtonian. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn in Vienna, Austria, in 1937, she survived the Blitz in London as a very young girl and then settled with her parents into an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It wasn't until 1966, when her husband, Neil Sheehan, took a job at the DC Bureau of \u003cem\u003eThe New York Times, \u003c\/em\u003ethat she became a Washington resident, but there she would raise their two daughters and remain for the next sixty years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy then, Susan was a correspondent for \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker, \u003c\/em\u003eon her way to writing eight books. One of them, \u003cem\u003eIs There No Place on Earth for Me?\u003c\/em\u003e, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1983. Neil was himself a well-known foreign and war correspondent. After becoming world-famous for his role in surfacing the Pentagon Papers (for which \u003cem\u003eThe Times \u003c\/em\u003ewon a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service), he would win his own Pulitzer (also for General Nonfiction) in 1989, for his monumental history of the War in Vietnam\u003cem\u003e: A Bright Shining Lie.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the earliest age, Susan says, she was a \"print junkie.\" Having grown up reading \u003cem\u003eThe Times \u003c\/em\u003einstead of children's books, she says she has always interacted with the world through the filter of great reporting and writing. From this point of view comes her idea of painting a portrait of her adopted hometown with a collection of the stories that left strong enough impressions to stick with her through the years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOf course, when you reside in Washington, DC, it's not all about politics. As a local resident, the backdrop of your daily life just happens to be the most powerful city on earth. In describing their hometown, these fine writers bring their residency and feelings to bear.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile it was statedly not Susan's idea to turn out a political book, experience tells us that a random sample can often yield universal truths. Published in chronological order, the seventeen stories in \u003cem\u003eOur Washington, DC\u003c\/em\u003e begin in 1963 with James R. Reston's eyewitness account of Dr. Martin Luther King's historic and hopeful \"I Have a Dream\" speech on the National Mall . . . and features, antepenultimately, a Linda Greenhouse column from 2022 decrying the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Row v. Wade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmerica's hometown is today in a period of rapid transition. The future is yet to be seen. A free and lively press, dedicated to fact-based reporting, will always be the best window.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSheehan, Susan:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Susan Sheehan graduated from Wellesley College in 1958, worked as a fact checker for Esquire for a year and a half, started writing book reviews for the New Republic in 1959, and light pieces for the New Yorker in 1960. After contributing \"casuals\" and Talk of the Town stories to the New Yorker, she became a staff writer for the magazine in 1961 and wrote her first nonfiction series in 1963.In 1965, Sheehan flew to Jakarta, Indonesia, to marry Neil Sheehan, a New York Times foreign correspondent she had met in New York City a few months earlier. In the summer of 1965, Neil was transferred to Saigon, where Sheehan wrote her first book, Ten Vietnamese, which was published in 1967. By then, Neil had been transferred to the Washington bureau of the Times. Sheehan commuted to New York for the next few decades, during which time she continued to write for the Times, the Boston Globe, and Washingtonian, in addition to authoring eight books. Is There No Place on Earth for Me?, published in 1982, won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1983. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and the Open Society Institute. She served as the chair of the Pulitzer Prize nominating jury for general nonfiction in 1988 and 1994, and as a member of that jury in 1991. She was also a contributing writer for Architectural Digest for fifteen years. Most recently, she reviewed books for the Outlook section of the Washington Post.","brand":"Sager Group LLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51623713505554,"sku":"9781958861585","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_fadde690-ab33-4675-ad4b-744eeaa7e83c.jpg?v=1758646048","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/our-washington-dc-americas-hometown-in-transition-9781958861585","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}