Woodward and Bernstein. You know who they are. Even if you weren't alive and kicking in the early 1970s, you know who they are. Especially since both men still show up in television interview shows to discuss our current political situations.

Back in the day, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were role models and heroes to aspiring young writers. (Like me.) Here were two journalists who did the investigations and the research, wrote their reports, published their findings and ended up changing the course of history. For the longest time, I had a paperback copy of All the President's Men in my home library. When I learned that Carl Bernstein was releasing a memoir, I leapt at the chance to get a copy. I've always wanted to know more about him. This book surprised me, and in a good way.

The key is the book's subtitle: "A Kid in the Newsroom." Because this is what Bernstein was, at the age of 16, when he started to work part-time as a copy boy in the newsroom of The Evening Star in Washington, D.C. It was the spring of 1960. John F. Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency. And Carl Bernstein was a junior in high school, cutting class more and more often to hang out at the newspaper office. From the moment he was given his first reporter's spiral-topped notebook, he immersed himself in the business of news reporting. We follow him from serving as a copy boy, to a dictationist, and eventually to earning a role as a contributing staff writer for the Star (1960-65). Afterward, he followed a co-worker and friend to northern New Jersey to work for a short stint at the Elizabeth Daily Journal, before returning to D.C. and landing at The Washington Post in 1966. Of course, Bernstein made extensive notes on every story that came his way. And he obviously kept all of his notes. As a result, he can provide an amazing view of the operations of a big-city newsroom from days gone by.

Bernstein can also share with us exactly what stories the papers were printing. These were challenging times. They included Kennedy's inauguration, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, the March on Washington, the assassination in Dallas, the beginnings of the Johnson administration, the space race and so on. Many issues and events centered around the Cold War and America's relationship with Russia. Many issues and events centered around civil rights, as they existed in our own backyards. The District of Columbia itself was a city divided by race. Most community groups consisted of memberships that were either all white or all black, and they rarely represented the city's population at large. Those of us who lived through these times are taken back there by Bernstein's stories. He reminds us of what we were dealing with, back then. In addition to being a personal memoir, this book offers us two simultaneous lessons: one in American history, and the other on the state of journalism. It is an amazing combination.

Of course, young Bernstein was also in the process of finding out who he could be, as a person. Or even as a partner in a relationship. Those who also grew up in the turbulent 1960s will find common ground here, too.

As usual, I listened to this book on CDs during my commute. Carl Bernstein read the prologue and part of the epilogue, and narrator Robert Petkoff read the rest of the text. Petkoff has a younger voice than Bernstein does. At first, the change in timbre was a bit disconcerting to this listener. It took me a while to realize how appropriate the choice was, though, since Bernstein was remembering himself as a young person in this book. His voice WOULD have been younger, then. This makes sense. Even though I would have preferred letting Bernstein tell me the whole story himself.

Chasing History can serve as a prequel to All the President's Men. I hope that it is just the first installment of Carl Bernstein's planned memoirs. I'm sure that he has more fascinating stories to share, from the mid-1970s and beyond. I highly recommend this book to students of both history and journalism.

The newsrooms of the 1960s may have disappeared. Many aspects of American culture and politics have changed since then, too. Bernstein returns us to these scenes with full reporting sharpness here. It was another time and, almost, another world. And yet: it seems as though the 2020s have more in common with the 1960s than you may have at first expected. The more things change....