Exeter, NH (October 22, 2009)—America’s oldest preparatory school newspaper, Phillips Exeter Academy’s The Exonian, will host renowned investigative journalist and author Bob Woodward, in a lecture and discussion. Regarded as one of the world’s preeminent investigative reporters, Woodward is best known for his work with reporter Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal in 1972, which led to numerous government investigations, the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, and the publishing of Woodward’s 1974 novel-turned-movie, All the President’s Men. Woodward is the author/co-author of 15 nonfiction books#nine of which have been No. 1 national best-sellers. He is expected to lecture on “The Press and the Presidency: Nixon to Obama,” on Thursday, October 29, 7 p.m., in the Assembly Hall, located on the second floor of the PEA Academy Building on Front Street. The event is free and open to the public.

Woodward’s latest publication, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, is his fourth book on President George W. Bush and was published two months before the 2008 presidential election. Ranked No. 2 on the national nonfiction best-seller list, the book detailed the friction among members of the Bush Administration as the president ordered a new surge strategy on the Iraq War. In 2006, Woodward’s third book on Bush, State of Denial, chronicled the then-president’s failure to report to the public how badly the war in Iraq was going. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan described the publication as “a good book. It may even be a great one. It is serious, densely, even exhaustively reported, and a real contribution to history. . . . What is most striking is that Mr. Woodward seems to try very hard to be fair.”

His other works include:  The Final Days (1976); The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979), co-authored with Scott Armstrong; Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984); Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (1987); The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (1994); Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (1999); Bush at War (2002); and   (2004).

Woodward was born in Geneva, IL, in 1943. He attended Yale University with an ROTC scholarship, and studied history and English literature. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1965 and began a five-year tour of duty with the U.S. Navy. In 1970, after being discharged from the military, Woodward applied for a position with The Washington Post. After he failed the two-week trial, he worked for a year at The Montgomery County Sentinel in Maryland and was hired as a Post reporter in 1971. Today, after winning nearly every American journalism award, including two Pulitzer Prizes—one for the Post’s Watergate coverage—Woodward serves as an associate editor and lives in Washington, D.C.

He received the Heywood Broun Award (1972); Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting (1972 and 1986); Sigma Delta Chi Award (1973); George Polk Award (1972); William Allen White Medal (2000); and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency (2002).

Former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee praised Woodward in the foreword of his memoir, A Good Life. “It would be hard to overestimate the contributions to my newspaper and to my time as editor of that extraordinary reporter, Bob Woodward#surely the best of his generation at investigative reporting, the best I’ve ever seen. . .” 

This event is hosted by members of The Exonian student newspaper and their faculty adviser, Michael Golay. For further information, contact Famebridge Witherspoon at 603-502-8536, or the Communications Office at 603-777-3450. For more information on other events, visit the Academy’s community calendar or visit the Academy’s website at http://www.exeter.edu/. You may also call the PEA public events line at 603-777-4309. Directions to the Academy are available at 603-777-4330.