8 ounces cream cheese, softened
6 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and chopped
1 small red onion, chopped
cup sour cream
3 ounces red caviar, drained
………
KNOPF, 1997
(available in paperback from Vintage, 1998)
WHEN KATHARINE GRAHAM assumed control of The Washington Post in 1969, she became one of the most powerful and influential women in America. In Personal History, Graham recounts her extraordinary life, from her privileged childhood in Washington, D.C., to her marriage to a brilliant but mentally ill husband, to her dealings, as a publisher, with labor strikes, assassinations, and presidential cover-ups.
Graham was no stranger to the newspaper business. Her father, Eugene Meyer, bought the Post in 1933 and worked relentlessly to increase profits. Both Graham and her mother worked in various capacities at the paper. After Katharine—or Kay, as she was known—married Phil Graham in 1940, Meyer gradually turned over operations of the paper to him, while Kay stayed home and raised their children.
Kay and Phil Graham spent the next twenty years involved in politics, the Post, and child-rearing. But Phil gradually fell victim to a debilitating mental illness that eventually claimed his life.
After his 1963 suicide, everyone—including Graham herself—assumed she would sell her interest in the paper. But Graham found herself reluctant to part with an enterprise that both her father and husband had spent decades building. With the advice and encouragement of friends, Graham overcame her gnawing lack of confidence and, in 1963, took over as publisher of The Washington Post.
In the ensuing years, Graham guided the paper through the upheavals of the Vietnam War, the assassinations of both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Watergate break-in and cover-up. She courageously supported reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they investigated and exposed the Watergate scandal. Their report rocked the nation, brought down a president, and catapulted the Post to international prominence.
With its depth, scope, and unique voice, Personal History tells the story of a formative time in American history through the eyes of a perceptive, powerful woman.
Throughout her life, Katharine Graham traveled in exclusive intellectual circles. She attended private schools and colleges and made her debut at eighteen. As a publisher’s wife and then a publisher herself, she dined with some of the world’s most powerful leaders, including presidents, prime ministers, and generals. One might assume high-quality food was served at such auspicious occasions, but Graham makes little mention of specific foods in Personal History. She focuses instead on the substance of these meetings rather than the culinary details.
One notable exception was author Truman Capote’s Black-and-White Ball. In November 1966, Capote hosted an extravagant, star-studded costume ball and invited Katharine Graham to be the guest of honor. Widely considered the social event of the century, the ball attracted 540 of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the country.
Although Graham reported that the “very good, simple food” made for a relaxed affair, others were less charitable, claiming the party succeeded in spite of the “unremarkable” food. Guests enjoyed their best food, it seems, before the party began, during the dozens of pre-ball dinners that Capote had arranged.
Capote asked Graham to bring the food for their private picnic dinner before the ball. Guessing Capote’s culinary preferences, Graham ordered champagne and caviar, but her life as an intellectual ill prepared her for such a purchase. “Having never lived this kind of life, I’d never bought caviar before and, when told its price, decided on a quarter of a pound, which was barely a couple of spoons for each of us,” she writes. In spite of the meager portions, Graham claimed that Capote left to greet guests in high spirits.
With a caviar pie, you can enjoy the opulence of the Black-and-White Ball at your next book club meeting.
When her Dallas Gourmet Book Club discussed Personal History, Nancy Primeaux prepared this caviar pie, a recipe contributed by her mother, Eleanor Ricards of Houston. Ricards found the recipe in the Gamma Phi Beta newsletter, attributed to member Billie Lasater. “I tried to envision the parties at Katharine Graham’s house, with people standing around with flutes of champagne. I thought the caviar pie would represent the era,” says Primeaux.
NOTE: Primeaux makes the pie the night before and tops with caviar at the last minute before serving, but it can be made further in advance. Just cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
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8 ounces cream cheese, softened 6 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and chopped |
1 small red onion, chopped
3 ounces red caviar, drained |
Butter the sides of an 8-inch springform pan. In a bowl, stir together the mayonnaise and cream cheese until smooth.
Spread the chopped egg across the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the onion evenly over eggs and press down gently. Cover this layer with the mayonnaise–cream cheese mixture, press down carefully, and smooth.
Gently spread sour cream over the top. Spoon drained caviar over the top and spread out in an even layer (take special care not to stir up the sour cream). Refrigerate 3 hours or overnight. Serve with plain crackers, such as toast crackers or water crackers.
Yield: 12 to 15 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
Alice Haddix’s Tucson, Arizona, book club was most impressed by Katharine Graham’s strength of character, as illustrated in Personal History. “We have a group memory of more than thirteen years,” says Haddix, “and we liked adding Katharine Graham to our pantheon of strong women,” which includes Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain, and the fictional heroine Smilla, who investigates a young boy’s death in Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow. “We’ve encountered a goodly number of women whose behavior and attitude toward the world struck us as strong and admirable,” says Haddix. “Katharine Graham is one of them. Rather than being a victim of history and personal experience, she’s a woman who triumphs, makes her peace, and overcomes.”
Graham’s triumphs seemed all the more remarkable in light of the obstacles she faced. As her husband, Phil, descended into mental illness, Graham had to cope without the benefit of modern-day psychiatric information and destigmatizing. “We were all taken aback by the inaccurate and harmful treatment of mental illness during that time,” says Haddix. “The world around her made it much harder for Graham to deal with mental illness than it would be today. She just didn’t have the proper tools.”
Discussion of Graham’s personal plight roused “strong emotional memories” in members, which they shared with the group. “One member’s husband was afflicted with mental illness for some months before dying; another’s father experienced something similar to an event in the book,” says Haddix. While some members identified with the tragedies in Graham’s life, all of them marveled at Graham’s phenomenal life story. “There are not a whole lot of us who could have done what she did, keeping such an enormous enterprise running with such a huge public profile,” says Haddix. “She led an amazing life.”
More Food for Thought
Nancy Primeaux of the Dallas Gourmet Book Club tried to re-create the ambience of an elegant party à la Katharine Graham for her group’s discussion of Personal History. Her menu included champagne and wine, caviar pie (see recipe), sausage pinwheels, shrimp curry supreme, saffron rice, green bean bundles, chocolate-raspberry tarts, and coffee, all served on Royal Doulton fine china and sterling silver. Guests sipped champagne from crystal flutes and dabbed their lips with linen napkins.
“My goal was to provide an elegant dinner in the style that would do justice to the kind of dinner parties that I imagined Katharine Graham would have hosted,” says Primeaux. “Members wore period dresses and long gloves, which was quite fitting for a dinner that started off with champagne and caviar.”