Word: brinkleys
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...next time you hear Tom Brokaw or David Brinkley accusing the candidates of being shallow and vague on the issues and of not providing realistic solutions to the deficit, think about Gail Sheehy and the premium (or lack thereof) she seems to put on important policy questions...
...Brinkley also salutes Leon Henderson and Chester Bowles, the two largely unheralded heads of the Office of Price Administration--probably the most thankless job in Washington during the war years. Though despised by every lobbying group that found its request for special privileges denied and by must of Congress, Henderson and Bowles managed to enforce some badly-needed rationing and price control programs on a nation that had just emerged from the Depression and was reluctant for another period of sacrifice and scarcity...
...someone like myself who lived in Washington after it had already become a government town, the city Brinkley describes is still all too recognizable--the all-Black ghettos remain and the elitist social scene that once dominated can still be found in certain exclusive neighborhoods and institutions...
...Brinkley seems to take comfort in relaying the city's faults during World War II as belonging to a different era, and his book is seen by critics as an amused and nostalgic reflection on a past we have supposedly overcome. But such confidence in Washington's progress may be misguided, as recent events have shown...
Many of the sins that Brinkley describes as characterizing Washington before the war have not left us. And in the cold light of the present they have not a trace of charm about them...