The Final Days

The Final Days is the 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.
"From these areas of inquiry, we drew up a preliminary list of several hundred persons to be interviewed. We spent six months at the task. The Final Days is based on interviews with 394 people. Some persons spent dozens of hours with us and volunteered information freely; one person was interviewed seventeen times. Many supplied us with contemporaneous notes, memoranda, correspondence, logs, calendars and diaries. Others granted interviews simply to give their version of events or to respond to information we had obtained elsewhere. A few, including President Nixon, declined to be interviewed. All interviews were conducted “on background”; that is, they were on the record we could use the information but only upon our assurance that the identity of the source would remain confidential. With this guarantee, those we talked to were willing to give us information we would never otherwise have been able to obtain. In general, we tried to interview the principals described in The Final Days only after extensive details had already been gathered from members of their staffs. We made clear to each person that we would attempt to check every detail."