Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom
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.
“Carl Bernstein, Washington Star.”
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.
In stores now.
Praise For ‘Chasing History: A Kid In The Newsroom’
“Bernstein chronicled many of the country’s most riveting stories even before he broke news of Nixon’s Watergate crimes, and he recounts his experiences with a mix of wonder and pride.”
“The work of reporter Carl Bernstein is already the stuff of legend, but in this engrossing new memoir, the writer who made his name uncovering the Watergate scandal (and countless Washington secrets since) recounts the beginnings of his life in newspapers, recalling a bygone era of American media and exposing the building blocks of an iconic career.”
“'Chasing History,' a rollicking memoir about the golden age of newspapers...vividly captures the bonds between a local newspaper and the community it covers. Reporters truly knew the people and territory they wrote about.”
“Chasing History transports readers to a ’60s newsroom—with its click-clacking typewriters & plumes of cigarette smoke—& follows young Bernstein, notepad in hand, as he covers major events like the inauguration of JFK & the 1963 March on Washington.”
“"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 and the craft of the men and women who made it all happen."”
“Bernstein is more concerned with leaving a portrait of his experience in mid-century America than with delivering a lecture. That's what makes Chasing History such an enjoyable book.”
— NPR
