Oh Why Did I Quit That Typist Job?

Last evening I attended a talk by the author of just published One DuPont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World. The book focuses on a boarding house in an upscale D.C. neighborhood before U.S. entry into World War I that became a salon of progressive thought. Author James Srodes focuses on 12 personalities of that place and time who would dominate America in coming decades, including the Roosevelts, Herbert Hoover, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, journalist Walter Lippman, Ambassador William Bullitt, plus three very accomplished siblings: John Foster, Allen and Eleanor Dulles. The first was eventual Secretary of State; the second became CIA Director, and the third was a prominent academic and roving diplomat.