All the President's Men

To understand why All the President’s Men was so popular, it is important to first consider the historical context in which the book was published. The book hit store shelves in June of 1974 amidst a major political crisis. The Senate Select Committee investigating the Watergate incident had uncovered the existence of a recording device in the White House and demanded the tapes. The President had resisted. The Supreme Court was at that moment considering whether the President would have to turn over the tapes to the Senate for review. In a month’s time, the transcripts would be released and published as The Nixon Tapes, another best-seller that showed in gory detail the everyday behavior of the President and his men. In two months, Nixon would resign in disgrace.

All the President’s Men was released into the middle of this fervor and provided a handy guide to contextualize much of the reporting spilling out of televisions and across newspapers. The reporting on the Watergate break-in, including Woodward and Bernstein’s own stories, was often published chaotically as new information was discovered. For hardcore political junkies, each story was like a new treasure, but for the average American the stories quickly became a morass of names, dates, events, and accusations. More confusing yet, in the rush to publish, some stories turned out to be incorrect or mistaken. Furthermore, the most important developments that were televised by the Senate Select Committee focused on very specific aspects of the Watergate story. All the President’s Men, then, was the perfect primer to get Americans up to speed on the most important news story of the day.

The book was very much written for a contemporary audience. For people who lived through the scandal, many of the names, dates, and events would have been familiar. All the President’s Men is as much as a complement to the Post’s reporting as a standalone primer.