Rare Creatures Essay, Research Paper

This now-famous book is one of those rare creatures – a real-life thriller that’s actually interesting for the average person to read. Starting with a simple break-in at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, two reporters from the Washington Post followed the trail of money and corruption back to its source. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you know exactly how this story turns out, but watching Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward track down the clues is quite interesting.

The flurry of different names and places can be intimidating, especially to the reader who does not have a lot of prior knowledge about the Watergate scandal. One will probably find oneself frequently flipping to the convenient Cast Of Characters page at the beginning of the book. Bernstein and Woodworth themselves are left rather faceless and I often found myself getting the two of them confused. Their attempts to humanize themselves fall flat almost every time, but that’s to be expected; they are reporters, not pulp fiction writers and this is not a made-up story.

This book is recommended for anyone and is quite a page-turner, even for someone with only a passing interest in politics and history. For someone who enjoys mysterious and thrillers, there’s nothing better than a good story from real-life. Everyone should read this book, if only for the historical impact that it has had on presidential politics.

Woodward and Bernstein have written a riveting account of how their tenacity and persistence caused the unravelling of the Nixon administration. It is fast-paced, gives an adequate synopsis of Watergate to a first-time Nixon reader, and re-affirms the need for the Fourth Estate and investigative journalism. From another dimension, it gives an inside peek into how newspapers work, their struggles over what to put on the front page every morning, and the debates that go on in the editor’s office. fascinating stuff.

There are two distinct camps when it comes to “All the President’s Men.” One side takes it as the recollection of two reporters who were there, who unearthed the story and found out what is currently as close as possible to the truth as is available right now. The other half calls it a bunch of “revisionist trash,” claiming that Woodward and Bernstein were manipulated by politicians into bringing down a President.

Ignore the latter camp.

Woodward and Bernstein produced one of the most readable accounts of the entire affair and while the story is not necessarily a pleasant one to read (unless you like reading about how corrupt America has become as a country), it is important, intense and gripping.

For anyone who is considering journalism or politics, it is a must read. This is one of those books that everyone in America should read