This Time, Bob Woodward Gets It Right
The Watergate journalist has taken a lot of hits—including from me. In his new Biden chronicle, War, he’s at his best.
By Franklin Foer, The Atlantic
At this late stage in Bob Woodward’s career, it would be possible to publish an entertaining anthology of the negative reviews of his books. Although there’s an ongoing debate about the journalistic merits of Woodward’s reportorial mode, he has no doubt succeeded in bringing out the vitriolic best from the likes of Joan Didion, Christopher Hitchens, and Jack Shafer.
A few years back, I wrote to Woodward, hoping to get his help with an article I was reporting. I decided to solicit him with a thick layer of flattery, in what I believed to be the spirit of Bob Woodward. To my embarrassment, he replied that he struggled to reconcile my fawning missive with the negative review of his book State of Denial that I had published in The New York Times in 2006, “which strongly concludes the opposite.” His response suggests that he might be the ideal editor of the anthology.