Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom
By Carl Bernstein
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this triumphant memoir, Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President’s Men and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage newspaper reporter in the nation’s capital―a winning tale of scrapes, gumshoeing, and American bedlam.
In 1960, Bernstein was just a sixteen-year-old at considerable risk of failing to graduate high school. Inquisitive, self-taught―and, yes, truant―Bernstein landed a job as a copyboy at the Evening Star, the afternoon paper in Washington. By nineteen, he was a reporter there.
In Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recalls the origins of his storied journalistic career as he chronicles the Kennedy era, the swelling civil rights movement, and a slew of grisly crimes. He spins a buoyant, frenetic account of educating himself in what Bob Woodward describes as “the genius of perpetual engagement.”
Funny and exhilarating, poignant and frank, Chasing History is an extraordinary memoir of life on the cusp of adulthood for a determined young man with a dogged commitment to the truth.
Reviews:
“A self-contained, beautifully written, powerfully remembered, charmingly honest account of the lower rungs of an already-changing business.” ―David Von Drehle, The Washington Post
“His career spans the profession’s best of times and the worst, though the story he tells in Chasing History evokes only the happy days. . . . Carl Bernstein’s book, which is ultimately a eulogy for print newspapers, is a passionate reminder of exactly what is being lost.” ―Jill Abramson, The New York Times Book Review
“Bernstein doesn't mention his later fame in Chasing History―this is a memoir limited to a set period of time, and he resists the urge to look forward. This gives the book its strength: It's not self-aggrandizing; it's content to be what it is, the story of a few years in the life of a young man getting his foothold in journalism. The book is marked by an appealing humility; while others might regard Bernstein as a living legend, his own opinion of himself seems much more measured.” ― NPR
“His picture of life on the Star is both vivid and elegiac. He captures the frantic rhythms of a big newspaper and its multiple editions―the first published at 11am, the last after Wall Street’s close―and the craft of the men and (still relatively few) women who made it all happen.” ― The Economist
“A warm and inviting read.” ― The Guardian
Carl Bernstein. Holt, $29.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-62779-150-2