All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein recounts one of the most shocking political sabotage and espionage at the highest level of the United States within the 20th century. While almost five decades late, I finally can say that I read the book! The movie may come next, but I still need time to process what just happened. Either way, All the President’s Men couldn’t have happened without the crew of The Washington Post at the time, consisting of both authors of the book along with their upper management staff. Events, along with history itself, obviously, could have turned out very differently had they not pursued the story along with getting the facts and having the courage to actually publish them as they did.

To be honest, it was exhilarating to read about the scandal in its entirety. Since the discovery of the Watergate burglary, the two author’s relentless digging and research led to something much bigger than they could have ever imagined, and what that led to was a noose getting tighter and tighter around the White House. The most powerful administration in the country couldn’t stop the journalistic forces from ultimately prevailing. In fact, I was shocked at how little the authors wrote regarding the fear for their lives during this period. The people they were insinuating of a deeper cover up were White House staff members that literally couldn’t go higher other than Nixon himself. I had assumed that threats to the authors and staff member themselves would have eventually unfolded the tighter the rope got, similarly to what you’d see in a gangster movie or something.

Ultimately, All the President’s Men goes to highlight how for some men and women, once power has been earned, they will stop at nothing to keep it. It’s a story as old as time. I believe it was a shocker for everyone at the time due to how many couldn’t have believed that the President of the United States could have been guilty in deploying such underhanded tactics. It was truly fascinating how the guilty kept denying and denying right up until the very end.

The really only issue I had with the book stems from how it just seems to end. While events moved very, very fast towards the end, the authors did not really cover the part regarding the Nixon tapes, in which the president bugged himself. This was clearly a significant event in the entire saga, but it was only very briefly glanced over in the Afterword section. The president’s resignation itself was also briefly mentioned in the Afterword. The book ended with President Nixon still claiming that the people have had enough of the Watergate scandal for over a year and that they should let him continue to perform the job he was elected to do. Finally, there was also nothing about how The Washington Post fared after the drama had finally ended. We followed both authors through this journey, and it felt like they didn’t even say goodbye to the readers. Maybe they left that and other juicy parts for their other book?