The Final Days
 |
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| Author |
Bob Woodward Carl Bernstein |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Richard Nixon, Watergate scandal |
| Genre | Political history |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
|
Publication date
|
May 1976 |
| Media type | Hardback |
| Pages | 476 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | All the President's Men (1974) |
| Followed by | The Brethen (Woodward, co-author, 1979) Loyalties: A Son's Memoir (Bernstein, 1989) |
The Final Days is a 1976 non-fiction book written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate scandal. A follow up to their book All the President's Men, The Final Days concerns itself with the final months of the Presidency of Richard Nixon including battles over the Nixon White House tapes and the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.
Not long after the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974, Woodward and Bernstein took a leave of absence from the Washington Post in order to begin work on the book. They originally intended to cover just the last hundred days of the Nixon presidency but then expanded it further back. They hired two research assistants, Scott Armstrong and Al Kamen and among them they interviewed 394 people involved in the tale. People were anxious to talk to them in an effort to get their (sometimes self-serving) perspective on the events included in the narrative, and almost all of them were promised anonymity in return. In this way they constructed a fly on the wall type narrative of the events in question.
While it was being written there were some intimations that it was going to be a "blockbuster" in terms of content, but Woodward demurred, saying instead that it would be "a book of a hundred small surprises."
According to Jon Marshall's 2011 retrospective look at Watergate and the press, in turn citing "most sources", although Bernstein got co-equal credit on the cover, he in fact did relatively few interviews and not only less of the writing than Woodward, but also less than either Armstrong or Kamen. (It could also be noted that Woodward wrote the foreword to Marshall's book.)
As noted in the book's foreword, all the information and scenarios depicted were taken from interviews with 394 people who were involved. All that was stated in these interviews was considered on the record but the identity of the sources remained confidential. Every detail was thoroughly checked and any information that could not be confirmed by two separate accounts was left out of the book.
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