Chasing History by Carl Bernstein

 

Carl Bernstein was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and he knew from a small boy what he wanted to do with his life.  He wanted to be a newspaper reporter and at age sixteen, he managed to get a job on the Washington Star as a copy boy.  Carl was the kind of kid who overachieved and he was always there at the newspaper, always ready to do anything he was asked to do.  He's go anywhere and talk to anyone.  As time went on, he began to have short pieces in the paper and by the time he was nineteen, he was writing stories on almost a daily basis.

This is the memoir of those early days.  It was the time of change.  John F. Kennedy was running for President and Bernstein was able to report on his appearances locally.  He went to car wrecks and fires and an airplane crash where there were no survivors.  Bernstein came from a liberal family, with his mother refusing to testify in front of Joseph McCarthy's Senate committee, and his biggest interest was in civil rights.  He got to know many of the leaders of the movement and reported on the atrocities happening in the South as well as the slow progress of the Civil Rights Act through Congress.  He was there for the worst story of his times, the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent killing of Lee Harvey Oswald.  

What most comes through in this book is the friendliness and energy of Carl Bernstein.  He was friends with anyone, even those diametrically opposed in their viewpoints.  He kept up this networking throughout his life, loyal to those he knew in his youth.  Carl didn't finish college; he barely graduated high school because he would not attend for days on end, days that he instead spent in the newsroom.  He was present for some of the most momentous events of the time and of course, in his next job at the Washington Post, ended up bringing down Richard Nixon's administration in the Watergate scandal which he and Bob Woodward reported on.  This book is recommended for those interested in memoirs and historical events.