Either Woodward or his publicist has banished the book from his website, which contains a lengthy description-and purchase button-for every other title that put his name on a dust jacket. Co-written by David Broder, it’s a collection of articles, first published in The Washington Post during the buildup to the 1992 campaign, about Vice President Dan Quayle. It’s not quite accurate to say that I read this book, though I did turn every page. Politico Magazine acquired a copy of Fear this week, and I’ve read it. Still, I wouldn’t do it again, and neither should anybody else. Why did I do it? Was it to uncover how the presidency has changed since Watergate? To prove that I could? So that you wouldn’t have to? All of the above. I learned a lot, even as I learned that not all palace intrigue is intriguing. I read four on vacation in mid-August, then four more the next week, and then five more, and seven more. I began reading and ranking every freaking Woodward book-all of 20 of them that’s almost 10,000 pages-when Fear, the new book about President Donald Trump, was announced last month. When he’s onto a good story-the resignation of a president, Iran-Contra, America’s post-9/11 wars-there’s no one better, or at least no one better who’s faster.

He may be the sole practitioner of a form that occupies a space between journalism and history, one that tries to balance immediacy with detail. People tell Woodward things they shouldn’t, from the alarming (Trump aides swiping memos from his desk) to the mundane (Nixon trying to gnaw open a childproof cap on a pill bottle with his teeth). No one can beat Woodward at getting the story of the White House from the inside, from the perspective of the decision makers as they saw themselves. That’s my main takeaway from reading 20 Bob Woodward books in the past four weeks. Flies should choose their walls carefully.

The final days bob woodward