This memoir by.NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg is about female friendships -- how important they are in life and in helping women succeed in male-dominated fields. The title implies that the book is mostly about Ms. Totenberg's decades-long friendship with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but it's broader than that. There are stories about their times together, but the book also covers feminism, careers, politics, and life in Washington DC. If you're looking for a biography of Justice Ginsberg, this will have some interesting info; if you want to learn about nurturing friendships, this is a great resource.

The book is a memoir of a noted .NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg. In it Nina talks about her years covering the Supreme Court, the highlights of her career and her longtime friendship with Ruth Ginsburg. You could also consider this book a manual on friendship in which Nina shares her views and secrets of nurturing friendships and friends. In her long life she made many friends across political isle. There is a lesson to learn. Another touching thing to read is the last pages devoted to the last days of Judge Ginsburg's life. The tone of the book is light despite many difficult events author speaks of, slightly gossipy (you learn about their shared love of shopping). I would recommend the book to people who are interested in feminism, politics and journalism. It would also be a good choice for a book club selection.

While I think the title is a bit misleading, because there is way more to this book than RBG stories, I still really enjoyed it. Nina has lived an extraordinary life surrounded by amazing people. I loved so many of the RBG stories but also the stories of all the women in her life. Also what an interesting career to be able to call all of these judges friends. I really enjoyed this one.

Nina Totenbery’s Dinners with Ruth is a wonderful read about several amazing women and the power of being there and showing up for friends. This was an absolute pleasure to read.

This is a light, pleasant, just-before-bed read for me.

In some senses, I wondered about the packaging / marketing of the book: indeed, the central friendship of the memoir was that with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a woman who, indeed, reached a kind of cult status in her lifetime, but it's also about some of Totenberg's NPR friendships and a little about her marriages, and about dinners but not ABOUT dinners in that the conversations were light and it was really a lot about health--so many different cancers as they struck key players in the book.

If you are looking for an in-depth look at politics or news from Totenberg, you won't get that, nor will you get much on Supreme Court cases, nor will you get much on the inner workings of the Supreme Court. If you are looking for smart conversations between friends, you won't get that, but you will get a lot of loving moments. Moments where one person would sit at another's bedside while experiencing impending widowhood or their own sicknesses. We spend more time in hospitals in this book than we do in spaces of news or courts.

I love NPR news and I love RBG, but I only liked this book. And that's OK--books like this are nice to read just before bed, when your intellect can be a little sleepier and you're just reading nice things about people who seem really nice.

I read an advance copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A fast and compelling read about the 50 year friendship between Nin and Rith Bader Ginsburg. You learn about Nina's years as a reporter for print papers and the NPR, being a trail blazing woman herself in a world dominated by men. Together Nina and Ruth break down barriers. They remain constant friends through loss, heartache and triumphs. You also meet other friends such as Cokie Roberts, linda Werheimer, Supreme Court Justices, husbands and other famiily members. A testiment to true friendship.

I enjoyed this memoir by Nina Totenberg, about her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I already knew they are/were both strong women. But I felt like the book was somehow lacking in the deeper things that I wanted to know about both women. Maybe that's just me.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

I love this book. A stunningly beautiful story of how friendship, true unfailing friendship, can change your life in powerful ways. Of course I love reading about Ruth, Linda and Cokie, but this was about so much more than the famous names. I am so incredibly thankful to have been able to read this advance reader copy and I will surely be sharing this book far and wide when it's published!

Well-written book about Nina Totenberg and her impressive circle of colleagues and friends. If I had one complaint to make it would be that RBG does not figure as highly in the contents as the title would imply.

I was so looking forward to Nina Totenberg's memoir Dinners with Ruth. I did enjoy learning about the friendships that Ms. Totenberg made throughout her career. I was expecting and hoping to learn more about her relationship with the late Justice Ginsburg. I was disappointed that there's really very little information about RBG that was new. That is why I am giving this book 3 stars instead of 4. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

I really enjoyed reading this book. Nina Totenberg's years long friendship with RBG offers a fresh perspective of her personal life, career, and health struggles. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Totenberg discusses weekly dinners she and her husband hosted with guests including Cokie Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It's a very intimate and humanizing portrait about DC powerbrokers friendships throughout the years and especially the close friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Nina Totenberg.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an Advanced Reader Copy.

I had really hoped to have come away from Dinners with Ruth with a better insight to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG); the "pull to this book" seemed to be that there was a special relationship between Nina Totenberg and RBG. And there definitely was a special relationship between Nina Totenberg and RBG, I don't doubt that. I don't feel like I gained any special insight into RBG, except that she really thought out what she was going to say well in advance and I loved how she chose her words/wording.

The part of the book dove into early childhood of both the author Nna Totenberg and also Ruth Bader Ginsburg and their lineage. The two women had not met in childhood, but in my opinion this part of the book muddles the families together.

Then a couple chapters later Nina details her first husband's (Floyd) injury and passing. And then she brings she brings up Floyd again (huh ... didn't he die?). And then goes on to discuss meeting her second husband and then something about Floyd again. So I start thinking, ok ... each chapter is some sort of essay about the title of the chapter ... its not organized sequentially, I can deal with that. So I get to the acknowledgements at the end of the book and just as soon as I think "she won't be referencing Floyd here", there he is again on the last page ("Also, Floyd's family, especially his daughter Evie Maxwell and my granddaughter Cody.")

I really wanted to like this book much more than I liked it. And I feel a bit disappointed that Nina Totenberg is a writer/journalist and such a close personal friend, that this book wasn't a little better. I honestly think I would have liked the book better if it had been titled A Memoir on the Power of Love and Friendships and then subtitled friendships with Cokie Roberts and RBG somehow.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review the Advance Read Copy of Dinners with Ruth in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to the author Nina Totenberg for sharing your memoir and to the publisher Simon & Schuster. Publication date is 13 Sept 2022.

Nina Totenberg has combined her very personal stories with eloquent tributes to the important and enduring friendships she has experienced.

It is an eminently readable memoir, but also an important lesson in what matters in the course of our lives. And, the author points out in anecdote after anecdote how critical friends have been to her professional life, and her personal life. Totenberg has the grace to acknowledge her own vulnerabilities and uses them to remind us how to accept friendship, and how to give it.

I loved the emphasis on her special relationship with RBG. She is clearly not writing to capitalize on it, but to honor it. . . And, that made the book very special to me.