Brief Bio & Author Photo

(Photo credit Lisa Berg) Click here to download a high-res version.

(Photo credit Lisa Berg) Click here to download a high-res version.

Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Woodward has written best-selling books on the last ten presidents—Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden—as well as the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, Hollywood and the Supreme Court. His approach is aggressive but fair and nonpartisan reporting.

He has authored or coauthored 21 books, all of which have been national non-fiction bestsellers. Fifteen have been #1 national bestsellers.

Woodward has taught a MasterClass on investigative journalism. Read more about the project or sign up to take the class.

Newsweek magazine has excerpted six of Woodward’s books in headline-making cover stories. 60 Minutes has done pieces on eight of his books; three of his books have been made into movies.

Woodward was born in Illinois and graduated from Yale University in 1965. He served five years as a communications officer in the U.S. Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining the Post.

Quotes about Woodward

“He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him...his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn’t be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique.”

— Robert Gates, former CIA director and Secretary of Defense, saying in 2014 he wished he’d recruited Woodward into the CIA

“Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time.”

— Bob Schieffer of CBS News

“Bob Woodward, a great reporter. . . . A great journalist of our time. One of the greatest explainers of how our government works. How our politics works. Not the kind of government in politics that we’re taught about in high school, or college, and textbooks. But how they really work, in reality.”

— journalist Robert Caro, in 2019

“Maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.”

— Gene Roberts, former managing editor of The New York Times, on Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate coverage

“What [Theodore] White did for presidential campaigns, Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward has done for multiple West Wing administrations — in addition to the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Federal Reserve.”

— David Von Drehle in The Washington Post

“The most celebrated journalist of our age.”

— Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal

“The best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever.”

— Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard

“A Bob Woodward book is like a large Christmas tree with dozens and dozens and dozens of unique ornaments…But the reason to read the book…is to see how the whole story fits together and see all of those ornaments on the tree that the news media never gets to because there are just too many of them.”

—Lawrence O’Donnell, on MSNBC

Further information about Woodward: