Fascinating first hand view!!

Excellent book on this critical, confusing time. And a reminder that what the outcome was by no means foreordained. Very thoughtful, insightful descriptions of how people in power behave, how they make their choices, and the nexus of politics in constitutional procedures. Also, the narrator sounds so much like the author that it's as if you're hearing Drew herself.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

compelling and frightening

very good read. compelling in its revelations. frightening in its relevance to today's political climate.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

What a great read!

I can’t say enough of how well this book was both written and narrated. It felt like I was right there listening to a news broadcaster summarizing the days events. Want to know what it felt like to be right there in Washington as the Watergate events unfolded? Listen to this book!

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Ms. Drew's Wayback Machine

"Timely" seems bost a most accurate and yet inadequate description of this great historical work. The answer to Ms. Drew's chilling last sentence is playing out now (Jan. 2018).

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Fascinating history

Any additional comments?

I lived through the Watergate era and read Ms. Drew's writings at the time. Reading it again is even more fascinating and revealing. Never a dull moment in the entire book. It brings it all back, but with the changed perspective of knowing what has happened since then.

I have to say, looking back at that time from the present, I am appalled almost to the point of despair, seeing the erosion of constitutional protections in our society in our current time. The level of spying perpetrated by the Nixon administration looks absolutely childlike compared with the universal blanket surveillance practices by the NSA. Not to mention the erosion of due process and rule of law that we now accept. And above all the limitless oceans of money that are now accepted as part of the political process.

All of this makes the Watergate era look almost like a golden age of innocence, even though Ms. Drew has a very sharp eye for the deep significance of those events. Highly recommended.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

Fascinating firsthand account of history!

I was a Watergate baby, and this book helpes me learn so much about what happened then.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

History repeats

If only dumb Republicans would dare pick a book they’d learned about being conned.

Democrats have to grow a pair and save our democracy.

I know, I know, it’s too much to ask for the dumb right-wingers to read.

“Don’t tread on me!” “My Second Amendment rights”. It is all they can utter while picking their noses and taking a bite.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

A lucid reflection on reporting Watergate.

Where does Washington Journal rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Elizabeth Drew's Washington Journal is among the finest of the books that came out of the Watergate experience. It is a masterpiece of long-form journalism, revealing the culture of the capital and providing excellent portraits of the major players. She is at her best in her reporting on and analysis of the House Judiciary Committee Hearings, centering those deliberations and the leadership of Peter Rodino in her narrative.
This isn't the best introduction to Watergate. The ideal reader or listener would already be familiar with the principal details of Watergate. For those who know something of that history and for those who lived through those years, Drew captures the experience of that heady, confusing, dangerous time as well as any other author.

What does Jo Anna Perrin bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Jo Anna Perrin does a magnificent job reading Drew's book. She projects the contemporaneity of the narrative as it was unfolding from week to week in 1973 and 1974.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

The watergate scandal

I have always wanted to know more about watergate. I was born during this period . I heard so much about it and I wanted to know about the history of watergate .

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Brilliant reporting

Elizabeth Drew has written a wonderful book about the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon. That the proceedings ended with his resignation rather than an actual impeachment and trial is only one of the many surprising turns taken by events in that dark time. It all looks so straightforward now, in retrospect, but Drew reminds us how full of twists and turns the story was at the time.

The great advantage of the book, and the source of its immediacy, is that it was written and published as a series of weekly dispatches as the events unfolded. When Drew described the opening speeches of the Judiciary Committee, she had no idea that Nixon's team was about to release the transcript of a conversation that would make his conviction by the Senate inevitable. It was as much a surprise to her as to the rest of us - and her account, far more than any other reporting on Watergate I'm aware of, helps us feel that surprise again.

Her typical method for a week's dispatch is to summarize the week's key events as reported in other sources. Sometimes - for a press conference or speech or committee meeting - she's able to describe the events first hand. Then she makes her rounds of Congressional sources, some of them named and some anonymous, and reports her conversations with them (they rarely feel like interviews) and distills their insights into the events of the week and their predictions for the future.

One of the surprises is the way the impeachment process had to be made up as the committee went along. The constitution is surprisingly vague about what constitutes an impeachable offense. "High crimes" seems straightforward, although it's unclear what differentiates a "high" crime from any other kind of crime; and what on earth is a "high misdemeanor"? The conclusion of the committee was that "high crimes and misdemeanors" meant whatever a majority of the House said it meant at that point in time.

My only regret about the book - really, my ONLY regret - is that she didn't start her assignment four or five months earlier. Had she done so, she would have been able to use her considerable talents to capture, for all time, that magnificent circus known as the Senate Watergate Committee. But no one gave her that assignment, and no one knew at the time where things would lead.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful