Most Popular Books by Bob Woodward

OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD RUNAWAY #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SENSATIONAL #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “Explosive.”—The Washington Post “Devastating.”—The New Yorker “Unprecedented.”—CNN “Great reporting...astute.”—Hugh Hewitt THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT With authoritative reporting honed through nine presidencies, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. Often with day-by-day details, dialogue and documentation, Fear tracks key foreign issues from North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, NATO, China and Russia. It reports in-depth on Trump’s key domestic issues particularly trade and tariff disputes, immigration, tax legislation, the Paris Climate Accord and the racial violence in Charlottesville in 2017. Fear presents vivid details of the negotiations between Trump’s attorneys and Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, laying out for the first time the meeting-by-meeting discussions and strategies. It discloses how senior Trump White House officials joined together to steal draft orders from the president’s Oval Office desk so he would not issue directives that would jeopardize top secret intelligence operations. “It was no less than an administrative coup d’état,” Woodward writes, “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.”

Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest. Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans. In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.” At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.” Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

Bob Woodward's new book draws from hundreds of interviews with key administration figures, their deputies and other firsthand sources. In addition, the book is based on extensive documentation, including internal memos, letters, chronologies and meeting notes. It will focus on national security, especially the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the fight against terrorism. Woodward has structured the book to answer the questions: How does Obama govern? How and why does he decide? And how does he balance the numerous pressures of the modern presidency? Obama has learned that he is not commander-in-chief of the economy, and many of his high-profile reforms - such as health care, education and energy - have been turned over to Congress. But the president has realized he has almost total authority as commander-in-chief. Woodward thinks of the book as conceptually titled, The Crucible: Obama at War. Filled with intimate details and verbatim accounts that come from meticulous reporting, this is an unprecedented look at a young president in the 21st Century.

This reissue of Bob Woodword’s classic book about John Belushi—one of the most interesting performers and personalities in show business history—“is told with the same narrative style that Woodward employed so effectively in All the President’s Men and The Final Days” (Chicago Tribune). John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose March 5, 1982, in a seedy hotel bungalow off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Belushi’s death was the beginning of a trail that led Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward on an investigation that examines the dark side of American show business—TV, rock and roll, and the movie industry. From on-the-record interviews with 217 people, including Belushi's widow, his former partner Dan Aykroyd, Belushi’s movie directors including Jack Nicholson and Steven Spielberg, actors Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, and Carrie Fisher, the movie executives, the agents, Belushi’s drug dealers, and those who live in the show business underground, the author has written a close portrait of a great American comic talent, and of his struggle to succeed and to survive that ended in tragedy. Using diaries, accountants’ records, phone bills, travel records, medical records, and interviews with firsthand witnesses, Woodward has followed Belushi’s life from childhood in a small town outside Chicago to his meteoric rise to fame. Bob Woodward has written a spellbinding account of rise and fall, a cautionary tale for our times, and a poignant and gentle portrait of a young man who had so much, gave so much, and lost so much.

“An intimate but disturbing portrayal of Nixon in the Oval Office.” —The Washington Post

Bob Woodward exposes one of the final pieces of the Richard Nixon puzzle in his new book The Last of the President's Men.

Woodward reveals the untold story of Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed the secret White House taping system that changed history and led to Nixon's resignation. In forty-six hours of interviews with Butterfield, supported by thousands of documents, many of them original and not in the presidential archives and libraries, Woodward has uncovered new dimensions of Nixon's secrets, obsessions and deceptions.

The Last of the President's Men could not be more timely and relevant as voters question how much do we know about those who are now seeking the presidency in 2016—what really drives them, how do they really make decisions, who do they surround themselves with, and what are their true political and personal values?

The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history. But as #1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis. Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink. This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with eyewitness accounts of what really happened. Intimate scenes are supplemented with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and governmental records, making *Peril* an unparalleled history. It is also the first inside look at Biden's presidency as he faces the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.

Chosen by WATERSTONES as one of their BEST POLITICS BOOKS of 2024 Two-time Pulitzer prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars - Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American presidency. War is an intimate and sweeping account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history. We see President Joe Biden and his top advisers in tense conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. We also see Donald Trump, conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power. With unrivalled, inside-the-room reporting, Woodward shows President Biden's approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant land war in Europe since World War II, and his tortured path to contain the bloody Middle East conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. Woodward reveals the extraordinary complexity and consequence of wartime back-channel diplomacy and decision-making to deter the use of nuclear weapons and a rapid slide into World War III. The raw cage-fight of politics accelerates as Americans prepare to vote in 2024, starting between President Biden and Trump, and ending with the unexpected elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president. War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate. Woodward's reporting once again sets the standard for journalism at its most authoritative and illuminating.

Based on 18 months of reporting, Woodward''s 17th book is an intimate, documented examination of how President Obama and the highest profile Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States Congress attempted to restore the American economy and improve the federal government''s fiscal condition over three and one half years. Drawn from memos, contemporaneous meeting notes, emails and in-depth interviews with the central players, THE PRICE OF POLITICS addresses the key issue of the presidential and congressional campaigns: the condition of the American economy and how and why we got there. Providing verbatim, day-by-day, even hour-by-hour accounts, the book shows what really happened, what drove the debates, negotiations and struggles that define, and will continue to define, the American future.

Woodward tells the story of his long, complex relationship with W. Mark Felt, the enigmatic former #2 man in the FBI who helped end the presidency of Richard Nixon.

Twenty-five years ago, after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Gerald Ford promised a return to normalcy. "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," President Ford declared. But it was not. The Watergate scandal, and the remedies against future abuses of power, would have an enduring impact on presidents and the country. In Shadow, Bob Woodward takes us deep into the administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton to describe how each discovered that the presidency was forever altered. With special emphasis on the human toll, Woodward shows the consequences of the new ethics laws, and the emboldened Congress and media. Powerful investigations increasingly stripped away the privacy and protections once expected by the nation''s chief executive. Using presidential documents, diaries, prosecutorial records and hundreds of interviews with firsthand witnesses, Woodward chronicles how all five men failed first to understand and then to manage the inquisitorial environment. "The mood was mean," Gerald Ford says. Woodward explains how Ford believed he had been offered a deal to pardon Nixon, then clumsily rejected it and later withheld all the details from Congress and the public, leaving lasting suspicions that compromised his years in the White House. Jimmy Carter used Watergate to win an election, and then watched in bewilderment as the rules of strict accountability engulfed his budget director, Bert Lance, and challenged his own credibility. From his public pronouncements to the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter never found the decisive, healing style of leadership the first elected post-Watergate president had promised. Woodward also provides the first behind-the-scenes account of how President Reagan and a special team of more than 60 attorneys and archivists beat Iran-contra. They turned the Reagan White House and United States intelligence agencies upside down investigating the president with orders to disclose any incriminating information they found. A fresh portrait of an engaged Reagan emerges as he realizes his presidency is in peril and attempts to prove his innocence. In Shadow, a bitter and disoriented President Bush routinely pours out his anger at the permanent scandal culture to his personal diary as a dozen investigations touch some of those closest to him. At one point, Bush pounds a plastic mallet on his Oval Office desk because of the continuing investigation of Iran-contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. "Take that, Walsh!" he shouts. "I''d like to get rid of this guy." Woodward also reveals why Bush avoided telling one of the remaining secrets of the Gulf War. The second half of Shadow focuses on President Clinton''s scandals. Woodward shows how and why Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr''s investigation became a state of permanent war with the Clintons. He reveals who Clinton really feared in the Paula Jones case, and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and ruthless, cynical legal strategies to protect the Clintons. Shadow also describes how impeachment affected Clinton''s war decisions and scarred his life, his marriage and his presidency. "How can I go on?" First Lady Hillary Clinton asked in 1996, when she was under scrutiny by Starr and the media, two years before the Lewinsky scandal broke. "How can I?" Shadow is an authoritative, unsettling narrative of the modern, beleaguered presidency.

Discover the inside story of life inside President Trump’s White House as only #1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward can tell it with this collection of Woodward’s most revealing and unprecedented works including Fear, Rage, and Peril. With authoritative reporting, internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward offers an exposing and riveting account of President Trump’s term in office—from the beginning to the final transfer of power to President Biden’s administration. In vivid detail, Woodward paints the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published in this complete trilogy following the Trump presidency. This collection includes: Fear: An “explosive” (The Washington Post) and “devastating” (The New Yorker) look at the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Fear is the inside story on President Trump as only Bob Woodward can tell it, drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files, and documents. Rage: An unprecedented and intimate tour de force of reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster, and racial unrest. In dramatic detail, Woodward has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. Peril: The book covers the end of the Trump presidency and the early months of the Biden presidency.

Co-authored with Bob Woodward, the book recounts the investigative reporting by Bernstein and Woodward that exposed the Watergate scandal. It provides an insider's look at journalism, politics, and the pursuit of truth in the face of political corruption.

The Choiceis Bob Woodward''s classic story of the quest for power, focusing on the 1996 presidential campaign as a case study of money, public opinion polling, attack advertising, handlers, consultants, and decision making in the midst of electoral uncertainty. President Bill Clinton is examined in full in the contest with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee. The intimacy and detail of Woodward''s account of the candidates and their wives show the epic human struggle in this race for the White House.

“An extraordinary work of reportage on the epic political story of our time” (Newsweek)—from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthors of All the President’s Men. The Final Days is the #1 New York Times bestselling, classic, behind-the-scenes account of Richard Nixon’s dramatic last months as president. Moment by moment, Bernstein and Woodward portray the taut, post-Watergate White House as Nixon, his family, his staff, and many members of Congress strained desperately to prevent his inevitable resignation. This brilliant book reveals the ordeal of Nixon’s fall from office—one of the gravest crises in presidential history.

With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers led the nation to war. Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council and firsthand revelations of the private thoughts, concerns and fears of the president and his war cabinet, make BUSH AT WAR an unprecedented chronicle of a modern presidency in a time of grave crisis. Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources and four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, BUSH AT WAR reveals Bush''s sweeping, almost grandiose vision for remaking the world. Woodward''s virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room reveals a stunning group portrait of an untested president and his advisers, three of whom might themselves have made it to the presidency. In BUSH AT WAR, Bob Woodward once again delivers a reporting tour de force.

"Featuring more than eight hours of Woodward/Trump conversations, The Trump Tapes is as historically important as the Frost/Nixon interviews. In this up-close, unvarnished self-portrait of Trump and his presidency, listeners will hear Trump as Woodward did: profane, incautious, divisive, and deceptive, but also engaging and entertaining, ever the host and the salesman, trying to sell his presidency to win Woodward over"--

Bob Woodward exposes one of the final pieces of the Richard Nixon puzzle in his new book The Last of the President’s Men. Woodward reveals the untold story of Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed the secret White House taping system that changed history and led to Nixon’s resignation. In forty-six hours of interviews with Butterfield, supported by thousands of documents, many of them original and not in the presidential archives and libraries, Woodward has uncovered new dimensions of Nixon’s secrets, obsessions and deceptions. The Last of the President’s Men could not be more timely and relevant as voters question how much do we know about those who are now seeking the presidency in 2016—what really drives them, how do they really make decisions, who do they surround themselves with, and what are their true political and personal values?

The most intimate portrait ever of a sitting president and his closest advisors, as they struggle to fulfill President Clinton''s promise to fix the American economy and set the country back on course. Bob Woodward is the author of six #1 national bestsellers, including All the President''s Men, The Brethren, and Wired. 16 pages of photographs.

The story behind some of the most newsworthy stories ever, written by the man with more #1 bestsellers than any journalist of our time. Bob Woodward has reported on every American president from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. His books have penetrated government institutions, informed the national conversation and shaped our culture. In Secrets, Woodward tells his story – from his Illinois youth to his Navy service during the Vietnam War to his tenure at The Washington Post, where his reporting with Carl Bernstein on Watergate captivated the world and became the book All the President''s Men. Like never before, Woodward takes readers inside his reporting on the White House, Supreme Court, CIA operations and the Pentagon. Woodward’s one-of-a-kind reporter’s memoir lifts the lid on his historic reporting relationships and secret sources, some spanning decades. The New York Times said of Woodward, ‘The scope and depth of his work have earned him a unique place in politics and journalism as perhaps the most enduring chronicler of American presidents.’ Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director said, ''He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts.''