All The President's Men

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

The President said, "I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of walking away form the job that the American people elected me to do for the people of the United States."

While not the best written book, All The President's Men is remarkable in the least for its incredible story. Woodward and Bernstein tell the very personal account of the struggle they went through to develop and prove their coverage of the Watergate fiasco. The story itself is incredible, but I found myself irritated by their inability to write it well. This was especially evident in Woodward's conversations with Deep Throat. While there is much to be said for journalistic taciturnity and objectivity, when writing a book it always help to give a little bit of description. It seemed that Bernstein and Woodward were always reluctant to include any sort of physical or mental descriptions. While there is plenty of factual documentation and evidential descriptions, the colorful stuff that actually makes reading enjoyable was almost entirely lacking. However, the story is incredible enough to make up for all of this. It is not often such a convicting account of politics is brought into the open. I warn you that All The President's Men may taint you on politics for a while--it's hard to trust any of our current officials when you know that this is their heritage.
Some people have suggested to me that the book is difficult to follow because of all the various players and the many names, but I did not find this to be the case. The book flows very well and reads fast. While I wouldn't recommend it as an occasional read, it doesn't require a map to follow the course of events. 6/10