Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies Hosts Book Signing for Alicia Shepard’s Woodward & Bernstein

The School of Continuing Studies hosted a book signing event featuring Alicia C. Shepard, author of Woodward & Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate, on Monday, October 22, 2007, at the Georgetown University Alumni House.  The event was well attended by Georgetown students in the journalism program. It also attracted guests and journalists from NPR and The Washington Post.  The book, published by John Wiley & Sons, provides context to the lives of the two celebrated, controversial, and influential journalists who were at the center of the Watergate scandal, and in the process became a part of history. 

When the biggest secret in journalism history - Mark Felt as Deep Throat - was finally revealed in 2005, many thought this was the final piece of the puzzle that was the Watergate scandal. Now, Shepard’s book de-mystifies the two men that were at the center of the maelstrom, and in the process became part of history. Using the Deep Throat revelations, combined with her unique access to never-before-seen archival material and extensive interviews, Shepard separates the myth from the reality a thorough and riveting retrospective and assessment of the duo collectively known as “Woodstein.”

“Alicia Shepard has written a brilliant biography of two giants of American journalism.  Her book offers penetrating new insights into the complicated relationship between her two subjects----both during their early days as they pieced together the Watergate scandal and over the years as their career took very different paths”, says Newsweek correspondent Michael Isikoff. “If All the President’s Men was the ultimate work of journalistic sleuthing, Shepard’s Woodward and Bernstein should be placed right next to it on every bookshelf.  It is likely to endure as the definitive account of the lives of two men who changed journalism forever.”

Shepard is an award-winning journalist and Ombudsman at National Public Radio (NPR).  She contributes to Washingtonian and People magazines, and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune.  For nearly a decade, she wrote for American Journalism Review on such things as ethics, the newspaper industry and how journalism works – or doesn’t.  For that work, the National Press Club awarded her its top media criticism prize in three different years.  Shepard is also co-author of Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11 (2002), about how journalists covered 9/11 and the role they played as modern-day keepers of calm on America’s most terrifying day.

In Woodward & Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate, Shepard both observes the events leading up to the pinnacle of Woodward and Bernstein’s careers and analyzes their widely divergent and controversial lives since Watergate.  Sober, insightful, and gripping, the book de-mythologizes the “Woodstein” legend, while looking at how living in the shadow of Watergate has affected the two most promising journalists of our time.  This fall Bob Woodward’s newest book will be released, the topic of which has remained a secret, and Carl Bernstein’s biography of Hillary Clinton was released this year.