Review: All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

Title: All the President's Men
Authors: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Publisher: Simon Schuster
Publication Date: November 1, 2007 (first published 1974)
Edition: ebook (352 pages)
Genres:

• Nonfiction
• History
• Politics
• Presidents
• Scandal

Literary Awards:

• Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, Washington Post (1973)
• National Book Award Finalist for Contemporary Affairs (1975)

All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were young reporters for the Washington Post, in 1972, at the time they were asked to cover the arrest of burglars who broke into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex, in Washington D.C., on June 17, 1972. Little did they know this would begin a journey that would uncover a political scandal of epic proportions eventually leading to the indictment of 40 White House officials and cause U.S. President Richard M. Nixon to resign in disgrace.

All the President's Men reads like a political spy novel--except that it is real life politics, perhaps, at its worst. I have read this book three times, and each time I read it, I still have difficulty grasping the complexity of what happened during Watergate, and the lengths President Nixon and his aid went to perpetrate crimes and cover them up. I was a teenager when the scandal broke, and I watched the Watergate hearings as much as time permitted.

I highly recommend this book, and the two subsequent books by the authors on this subject. All three books serve as a historical record of what happened, and, in my opinion, also represent journalism and the power of the free press at its best.