All the President's Men

Early lives and education

All the President’s Men was written by two American journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose paths into reporting differed but converged at the Washington Post. Bernstein was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944. He entered newspaper work as a teenager, first serving as a copyboy at age sixteen and becoming a reporter at nineteen. He attended the University of Maryland but did not complete a degree. His early experience in local journalism helped form the persistent, detail-oriented reporting style he later brought to the Watergate investigation. He joined the Washington Post in 1966.

Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois, in 1943, and grew up in Wheaton, a Chicago suburb. His father was a prominent local jurist, and Woodward was once expected to pursue a legal career. In 1961 he entered Yale University on a Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship, studying history and English literature. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1965 and then served in the U.S. Navy for about five years. After leaving the Navy as a lieutenant in 1970, he considered law school and applied to the Post. He failed an initial two-week reporting trial, worked for a year at the Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in the Washington suburbs, and was hired by the Post in September 1971. That early setback preceded the work that would make him nationally known.

Watergate and major works

In 1972, Woodward was assigned to report on the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. Bernstein also pursued the story, and the two reporters worked together as evidence connected the burglary to a wider political cover-up. Their reporting, alongside that of the Post newsroom, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Their 1974 book, All the President’s Men, recounted the investigation and the methods through which they developed and checked its leads. They followed it with The Final Days (1976), an account of the closing period of the Nixon administration.

Bernstein continued as a journalist and author, writing about politics, institutions, and public figures. His later books include His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (1996) and A Woman in Charge (2007), a biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton. His work extends the investigative interest visible in the Watergate book, combining political context with accounts of the people and organizations involved.

Woodward became one of the Post’s most prolific reporters and political nonfiction writers. With Scott Armstrong, he wrote The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979). His other major books include Wired (1984), about John Belushi; Veil (1987); Bush at War (2002); Plan of Attack (2004); Obama’s Wars (2010); and Fear (2018). Across these works, he has often used extensive interviews and reporting on government officials and national-security matters to describe how major decisions are made. His access to political sources has drawn attention as well as debate, but has helped make his books prominent accounts of modern American political life.

Reputation

Bernstein and Woodward remain among the best-known journalists associated with American investigative reporting. Their Watergate work gave them lasting reputations, while their later careers established distinct bodies of political journalism and nonfiction. Woodward is particularly known for sustained reporting on presidents, government, and national security; Bernstein is recognized for investigative journalism and political biography. Both authors are living. Their reporting and books continue to serve as reference points in discussions of source protection, verification, newsroom collaboration, journalistic ethics, and the role of a free press in holding power accountable.