Review: All the President’s Men

All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is, of course, a classic and, both Bernstein and Woodward would say (and do in the introduction of the new edition), a timely one. In this book, we follow the saga of the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, spearheaded by two young journalists, Woodward and Bernstein, from the beginnings of the scandal to the resignation of President Nixon.

The story is well known and has so many twists and turns as journalists like Woodward and Bernstein sought the truth about the Watergate scandal and the Nixon administration desperately tried to keep it hidden. The tale is full of wrong turns and lucky breaks, but also shows the care that newspapers of the era spent to be sure that they were printing sound information. The sordidness of the Nixon administration's denials and obfuscations made that so much harder, of course.

Of course, the story invites parallels to today- both in the threat to democracy and the ways that ordinary decent people countered the threat when they found themselves in a moral crisis. It is ultimately a heartening one, although very much a cautionary tale.

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