Nina Totenberg to release memoir about Ruth Bader Ginsburg

One of late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s close confidants of almost-50 years is releasing a memoir about their relationship.

“Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships,” by longtime NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg, will be released on Sep. 13, Axios first reported on Tuesday.

A promotional page for the book describes how Totenberg, then a cub reporter, called Ginsburg in the early 1970’s to ask the then-attorney’s early cases she argued against sex discrimination.

“That call launched a remarkable, nearly 50-year friendship,” publisher Simon & Schuster said.

“’Dinners with Ruth’ is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers,” the publisher said.

“It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood.”

Ginsburg died in 2020 at age 87.

Before Ginsburg’s death, Totenberg, 78, and her friend shared “not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men.”

The title of the book comes from Totenberg “reserving” Saturday nights just for hosting dinners at her home with Ginsburg in the last year of the liberal jurist’s life.