Playing for Keeps In Washington

What does it take to acquire power and to keep it? What is the price paid for it? Laurence Learner delves beneath the politics and public facades of the people who form the aristocracy of success in the nations capital. Men and women like Washington Post-owner Katherine Graham, Ben Bradlee, Senate majority leader Robert Byrd, Henry Kissinger. superlawyer Edward Bennett Williams, Ralph Nader. Donald Rumsfeld. Ted Kennedy. culture brokers Nancy Hanks and Michael Straight. Representative Phil Burton, and others reveal their human sides. the part of them that strives, fights, plans. and drives them to prominence and power. Playing for Keeps is the story of ambition in action and of the extraordinary people whose uncommon denominator is personal power-what it means to them and the ways in which they gained it. The result is the most intimate look at Washington we may ever get.