Product Description

Based on new interviews and never-before-seen archival materials, Woodward and Bernstein takes a fresh, thought-provoking look at this unlikely journalistic duo. Thrown together by fate or luck, Woodward and Bernstein changed the face of journalism and the American presidency. For the first time, Shepard separates myth from reality as she traces the lives of the iconic journalists before and after Watergate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #886266 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this double career biography, Shepard takes one of the most famous and influential episodes in twentieth-century journalism and shows how it affected the lives of the two Washington Post reporters who gave it life, chronicling the lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from their pre-Post days to the present. Using a plethora of interviews with all the leading characters, as well as newly-unearthed archives, Shepard picks up where Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men leaves off, filling in the parts of the story that have been obscured by that title's massive popularity-"many have misread their fascinating story as being the only story"-and providing welcome context through vivid cultural snapshots. Shepard shows how the long shadow of their first book and its blockbuster film adaptation led to the duo's 1977 breakup, and how it haunted the rocky solo careers pursued by each. Separating the men from the myth, journalism professor Shepard provides an insightful, highly readable study for fans of journalism, U.S. politics and the work of "Woodstein."
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Review
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein will always be famous for their part in untangling the Watergate scandal. Shepard, though, is far more interested in what happened afterward, and in examining the uneasy rewards of early success. Her prose can be clichéd, but her biographical curiosity is large; she seems to have interviewed almost everyone with a connection to her subjects. Other journalists played important roles in ending the Nixon Presidency, Shepard notes, but it was the film version of “All the President’s Men,” a retelling that left several colleagues feeling slighted, that enshrined “Woodstein” in “fame and glory.” When the pair sold their papers to the University of Texas, for about five million dollars, one observer noted that they had become “as much a part of the story of Watergate and historical record as any of the people they reported on.” (New Yorker, December 4, 2006)

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are in the news again—as they have been since teaming up at The Washington Post more than 30 years ago to expose unimaginable corruption in the White House of Richard Nixon.
Woodward has just published an expose of George W. Bush's presidency, especially the conduct of the war in Iraq. Bernstein is soon to publish a long-awaited biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The timing is good for Alicia C. Shepard, author of "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate." Writing a biography of journalists is a dicey proposition for the biographer. After all, journalists are almost always observers, not participants. What they publish is almost entirely dependent on what other people say and do. So why not write biographies of those other people—the movers, the shakers—rather than chronicling the seemingly second-hand lives of the observers?
In the case of Woodward and Bernstein the dicey proposition becomes a safe bet. They are journalists who made a significant difference in American history by helping drive a U.S. president from office, journalists who have achieved celebrity status by publishing serious exposes, journalists who have lived interesting private lives.
Shepard's dual biography is not the first about Woodward and Bernstein. Thirteen years ago, Adrian Havill published "Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein." It shed useful light on them as journalists and as human beings. Shepard, however, is able to tell the story of the two journalists brought together by chance at The Washington Post more fully.
After all, Woodward and Bernstein have accomplished a great deal since 1993, and Shepard can bring their stories up to date. She is the first journalist to rely heavily on personal papers Woodward and Bernstein sold to the University of Texas archives. Perhaps most powerfully, Shepard is able to discuss the identity of the journalistic duo's previously secret source, the man called Deep Throat in the book and movie that made Woodward and Bernstein famous, "All the President's Men."
Shepard, who teaches journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., has written wisely about the successes and failures of reporters and editors for many years, especially for the American Journalism Review. Because Shepard is so knowledgeable about the inner workings of newsrooms, her dual biography doubles as a primer on journalism that's especially informative for nonjournalists about the use and abuse of anonymous sources by reporters and editors.
Woodward, going solo after he and Bernstein split over professional differences, quotes anonymous sources regularly in his books and sometimes in his newspaper pieces. Lots of journalists are patient with or even endorse finding information from anonymous sources as an invaluable tool. Others believe the practice constitutes lax reporting that allows sources to exaggerate or lie without adverse consequences.
For readers who prefer nicely verified gossip, Shepard chronicles the difficulties both men had with handling fame and wealth—their divorces, their off-and-on bitterness toward each other, their dismay at the carping of book reviewers, their precarious professional relationships with colleagues at the Post.
For all its detail, Shepard's book is not comprehensive. It glosses over the journalists' childhoods—Woodward's in a Chicago suburb and Bernstein's in Washington, D.C. It barely mentions or ignores numerous journalism controversies involving the years Woodward and Bernstein worked as a team during the 1970s. Shepard does not even discuss half of Woodward's controversial investigative books.
The dual biography's relative brevity is more virtue than drawback, though. After all, journalists are mostly observers, making large portions of their careers difficult to fit into a compelling narrative. Shepard has found a good balance to minimize the odds of readers exiting early.
—Steve Weinberg, a freelance investigative reporter, has written frequently about Woodward and Bernstein. (The Oregonian, November 26, 2006)

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein will forever be remembered as the reporters whose investigative series for the Washington Post on the Watergate scandal would ultimately force President Nixon to resign in 1974. But what happened after Watergate? Shepard (journalism, American Univ.) provides a thoughtful account of the next stages of Woodward and Bernstein's careers. In alternating chapters, she details the personal and professional ups and downs of each man, from Woodward's stint as the Post's assistant managing editor and subsequent downfall in the wake of reporter Janet Cooke's phony story profiling an eight-year-old heroin addict to Bernstein's divorce from writer Nora Ephron, which she turned into the movie Heartburn. Concluding with the revelation of famed Watergate source "Deep Throat," Shepard sustains reader interest in the two men after what might be the apex of anyone else's career. Unlike Adrian Havill's Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Shepard's book chronicles the lives of two of the 20th century's most notable journalists without casting judgment. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
—Regina M. Beard, Kansas State Libs., Manhattan (Library Journal, October 15, 2006)

Review
"Alicia Shepard has written a brilliant biography of two giants of American journalism. Her book offers penetrating new insights into the complicated relationship between her two subjects—both during their early days as they pieced together the Watergate scandal and over the years as their careers took very different paths. If All the Presidents Men was the ultimate work of journalistic sleuthing, Shepard's Woodward and Bernstein should be placed right next to it on every bookshelf. It is likely to endure as the definitive account of the lives of two men who changed journalism forever."
—Michael Isikoff, Investigative Correspondent, Newsweek

"Alicia Shepard has long been one of the nation's most important writers on journalism. Now she turns her attention to two of history's most famous journalists. Her book is a winner--penetrating, fascinating, and remarkably balanced."
—Gene Roberts, former managing editor of the New York Times

"Even those who think they know Watergate and Woodstein will find delicious surprises in this engaging book. Those who've always wondered what the fuss is about will find an even-handed, comprehensive answer. All will be powerfully reminded that dogged reporting from an outsider¹s perspective is a democratic essential ­ and that those who succeed gloriously at it may one day wake up insiders."
—Geneva Overholser, Professor, Missouri School of Journalism, and former Ombudsman, Washington Post

"Here is the story of the two reporters who cracked the Watergate cover-up. How they did it and what has happened to them since makes for fascinating reading."
—Sam Donaldson, ABC News Correspondent