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All the President's Men
, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
First, an embarrassing admission. I knew there was a famous and generally well-regarded writer named Bob Woodward who wrote books on Washington politics. I also knew that the famous investigative journalists who were instrumental in cracking the Watergate case were Woodward and Bernstein. I did not know until right before I picked up All the President's Men that they were the same person. Duh.
...That's probably as good an intro as any to my second point, which is that 20th century political history is not an area where I know very much. I mean, I knew the general outline of the incident, but it basically boiled down to "There was a break-in, and a coverup, and Woodward and Bernstein, and some tapes, and an 18 1/2 minute gap, and Spiro Agnew resigned for some reason, and a smoking gun, and then Nixon resigned. And somewhere in there he said he wasn't a crook." So in some ways I was in the perfect place for reading the book: I knew enough to be interested, but not so much that I could predict what was going to happen next.
( And of course I knew that there was a lot more going on than that brief synopsis. )
I promise I will at some point post a review of a book I don't care for, just so I look less like a shill. ;)
, by Bob Woodward and Carl BernsteinFirst, an embarrassing admission. I knew there was a famous and generally well-regarded writer named Bob Woodward who wrote books on Washington politics. I also knew that the famous investigative journalists who were instrumental in cracking the Watergate case were Woodward and Bernstein. I did not know until right before I picked up All the President's Men that they were the same person. Duh.
...That's probably as good an intro as any to my second point, which is that 20th century political history is not an area where I know very much. I mean, I knew the general outline of the incident, but it basically boiled down to "There was a break-in, and a coverup, and Woodward and Bernstein, and some tapes, and an 18 1/2 minute gap, and Spiro Agnew resigned for some reason, and a smoking gun, and then Nixon resigned. And somewhere in there he said he wasn't a crook." So in some ways I was in the perfect place for reading the book: I knew enough to be interested, but not so much that I could predict what was going to happen next.
( And of course I knew that there was a lot more going on than that brief synopsis. )
I promise I will at some point post a review of a book I don't care for, just so I look less like a shill. ;)