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

All the President's Men

by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Page Length: 480 pages

Genre: Nonfiction, Politics, True Crime, Journalism

Sometimes books are situational. How you feel about them depends on the period of your life that you are in. I feel like this is the case with this book. 

No matter when I would have picked it up it would have been well written with engaging storytelling. Yet, I do not think it would have held my interest as much as it has now. 

I picked this book up because it is on Amazon's 100 Books To Read in Your Lifetime. Coincidently I started reading the same time the comparisons between Trump and Nixon began. I am not a history buff, and my knowledge of politics is confined to basic Political Science courses. None of these ever covered Nixon. Reading this book helped me to understand why comparisons were being made between administrations. 

There is another amazing component about this book. It was fascinating reading about the journalistic pursuits of Bernstein and Woodward. For one, they had to put aside their differences in personalities to work together on a story of a lifetime. It was evident in the writing that both were aware of potential conflicts of personality and tried to create a clear picture without causing offense. It also showed how their relationship changed from conflict to check and balances, using each other's differences to make sure they did not cross a line in their story. 

It also showed their journalistic integrity. They created rules about the number of sources they would have at a minimum when publishing. They held off on publishing when they did not feel there was enough evidence to support their claim. They also became the bad guys of D.C. for a while. It leads me to wonder how Journalism has changed with the increase of technology.