This book, published in 2016, documents the houses and lives of the bureaucratic, journalistic and spy elites who lived very close to each other in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, during the Cold War and used the dinner party as an alternative method of meeting, sharing and working.

In the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, Washington was a very different place, and so was Georgetown. The main form of recreation for the people running the country – and, by extension, the world – in those days was to go to each other’s houses for dinner, drinks, and conversation. They were friendly affairs, but underneath the chit-chat, real work was being done. To tour those houses and remember the people who lived in them is to see the history of that era in a new way that finds the domestic and the diplomatic crashing together.