Journalists and pols were cozier then. President Kennedy sipped 1945 Lafite-Rothschild at the Alsops' Georgetown home, and the Alsops dined at the White House.

All the portraits that hang on the walls of the living room are, I realize, of my mother's family: miniatures of her great-aunts in Victorian bustles and elaborate feathered hats; a gilt-framed oil of her great-great-great-uncle as a boy in pastoral England, wearing a gold riding coat over white jodhpurs and sitting astride a white steed, a King Charles spaniel yapping at them from the foreground of the canvas.

Every miracle is the suffrage of heaven to the truth of a doctrine.

Donna became autocratic the day Daniel born, and she realized she had absolute power over another human being.