Washington's Golden Age

Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists

Joseph Dalton

Real news traveled fast, even in the days before internet connections. During the New Deal and World War II, Washington elites turned to Hope Ridings Miller’s column in the Washington Post to see what was really going on in town. Cocktail parties, embassy receptions and formal dinners were her beat as society editor. “I went as a guest,” said Miller, “and hoped that they’d forget I was a reporter.”

In Washington’s Golden Age, Joseph Dalton chronicles the life of this pioneering woman journalist who covered the powerful vortex of politics, diplomacy, and society during a career that stretched from FDR to LBJ. After joining the Post staff, she was the only woman on the city desk. Later she had a nationally syndicated column. For ten years she edited Diplomat Magazine and then wrote three books about Washington life. Once a girl from a small town in Texas, Miller created a web of connections at the highest levels. In Washington’s Golden Age, Dalton escorts readers inside the Capital’s regal mansions, the hushed halls of Congress, and the Post’s smoky and manly newsroom to rediscover an earlier era of gentility and discretion now relegated to the distant past.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 264 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-5381-1614-2 • Hardback • October 2018 • $29.95 • (£25.00)

978-1-5381-1615-9 • eBook • October 2018 • $28.50 • (£19.99)

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical, History / United States / 20th Century, Language Arts & Disciplines / Journalism, History / United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)

Washington's Golden Age

Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Real news traveled fast, even in the days before internet connections. During the New Deal and World War II, Washington elites turned to Hope Ridings Miller’s column in the Washington Post to see what was really going on in town. Cocktail parties, embassy receptions and formal dinners were her beat as society editor. “I went as a guest,” said Miller, “and hoped that they’d forget I was a reporter.”

In Washington’s Golden Age, Joseph Dalton chronicles the life of this pioneering woman journalist who covered the powerful vortex of politics, diplomacy, and society during a career that stretched from FDR to LBJ. After joining the Post staff, she was the only woman on the city desk. Later she had a nationally syndicated column. For ten years she edited Diplomat Magazine and then wrote three books about Washington life. Once a girl from a small town in Texas, Miller created a web of connections at the highest levels. In Washington’s Golden Age, Dalton escorts readers inside the Capital’s regal mansions, the hushed halls of Congress, and the Post’s smoky and manly newsroom to rediscover an earlier era of gentility and discretion now relegated to the distant past.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 264 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-5381-1614-2 • Hardback • October 2018 • $29.95 • (£25.00)

978-1-5381-1615-9 • eBook • October 2018 • $28.50 • (£19.99)

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical, History / United States / 20th Century, Language Arts & Disciplines / Journalism, History / United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)

Author

Joseph Dalton has been a general arts reporter and music critic for the Times Union in Albany, NY since 2002. Hope Ridings Miller is his first cousin twice removed.

Reviews

This biography of Hope Ridings Miller, long-time Washington Post society editor, offers a heady insider's view of the capital's political and social swirl from the 1930s to the 1980s.... This well-documented, engaging, and loving tribute by a distant cousin does Miller justice and heralds another woman who quietly but effectively affected history
— Booklist

“The best women reporters in Washington have always found unique ways to get their stories. This was especially true of society editor Hope Ridings Miller. Read about the rise of women in Journalism in this biography of a trailblazer.”
— April Ryan, White House Correspondent-American Urban Radio Networks; CNN Analyst; author

“At a time when people turned to newspaper society pages to find out what was really going on in the nation’s capital, Hope Ridings Miller was there to tell them. In this meticulously researched book, Joseph Dalton traces his cousin’s remarkable career as society editor for The Washington Post and observer of the power elite. Eleanor Roosevelt, Sam Rayburn, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Mary Pickford, Walt Disney, Jacqueline Kennedy, Pat Nixon and even the Hope diamond all make appearances in Washington’s Golden Age, but the real star is Miller, who not only documented a rarified world of high society and politics but lived it. Beyond the glittering social scenes, Dalton offers a glimpse of a time when women were just beginning to make their way in the newspaper business, when reporters and the people they covered were often allies, and when the rules of the game called for civility and manners – and sometimes even white gloves. The result is a book that will be appreciated by anyone who loves history, journalism or simply a good story.”
— Kristin Grady Gilger, Senior Associate Dean, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University

“Joseph Dalton’s Washington’s Golden Age is a marvelous biography of the plugged-in reporter Hope Ridings Miller. The anecdotes told are dazzling and the research impressive. Highly recommended!”

— Douglas Brinkley, historian and author

"From state dinners to cocktail parties, social gatherings took on an air of ease and informality during the FDR administration. As society editor for the Washington Post, Hope Ridings Miller covered it all, including Eleanor Roosevelt’s historic press conferences. Dalton’s accomplished and engaging biography offers readers a vivid portrait of Washington in times of war and peace and highlights the increasingly important contribution of women journalists.”

— Will Swift, author of "The Roosevelts and the Royals" and "Dick & Pat: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage"

"Hope Ridings Miller was a close confident of Sam Rayburn, the longest serving Speaker of the House in history. That’s just one of the many connections to power and influence in Miller’s remarkable life. Hers is a story that deserves telling and Joseph Dalton has done a fantastic job in describing the Washington that once was."

— Anthony Champagne, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Dallas

Washington's Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists is an adventurous look back at a woman who outgrew her small-town Texas roots to become a nationally respected Washington personality . . . I have racked my brain for an appropriate summation of this wonderful book . . . Consider Washington's Golden Age this year's must-have stocking stuffer.
— The Paris News

"This anecdote-laden biography portrays Miller’s efforts to remain an impartial reporter despite her kinship with Washington’s elite. Similarly, the well-researched chronicle of Miller’s vocation is a passport to a genteel era when comparative civility and social graces prevailed in national politics and American culture."
— Choice Reviews

A delightful and informative read for journalism, diplomatic, and feminist studies students and politics buffs
— Library Journal

In our present day where Donald Trump and his congressional cronies decry journalists as Enemies Of The People, as well as presenting a persistent misogynist attitude toward women in general, and female reporters in particular, "Washington's Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists" is unreservedly recommended as a critically important and urgently needed addition to community, college, and university library American Journalism History collections.
— Midwest Book Review