Woodward now lives in the Georgetown section of Washington. He is married to Elsa Walsh, a writer for
The New Yorker and the author of
Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women. He has two daughters.
Woodward still maintains a listed number in the Washington, D.C. phone directory. He says this is because he wants any potential news source to be able to reach him.
Books
Woodward has co-authored or authored twelve #1 national best-selling non-fiction books, They are:
- All the President's Men — about the Watergate scandal; (1974) ISBN 0-671-21781-X, 25th Anniversary issue in (1999) ISBN 0-684-86355-3; written with Carl Bernstein
- The Final Days — about Nixon's resignation; (1976) ISBN 0-671-22298-8; written with Carl Bernstein
- The Brethren — about the Supreme Court in the Warren E. Burger years; (1979) ISBN 0-671-24110-9; written with Scott Armstrong
- Wired — on the death of John Belushi and the Hollywood drug culture; (1984) ISBN 0-671-47320-4
- Veil — about the CIA's "secret wars" during the reign of William J. Casey; (1987) ISBN 0-671-60117-2
- The Commanders — on The Pentagon, the first Bush administration and the Gulf War; (1991) ISBN 0-671-41367-8
- The Agenda — about Bill Clinton's first term; (1994) ISBN 0-7432-7407-5
- Shadow — on the legacy of Watergate and the scandals that faced later Presidential administrations; (1999) ISBN 0-684-85262-4
- Bush at War — about the path to war with Afghanistan following September 11; (2002) ISBN 0-7432-0473-5
- Plan of Attack — about how and why President George W. Bush decided to go to war with Iraq; (2004) ISBN 0-7432-5547-X
- Bush at War, Part III — which revealed some interesting information about the Bush administration and the War in Iraq. Highly controversial, it appeared on the Today show just before its release; (2006) ISBN 0-7432-7223-4
- A Secret White House History — (2008) ISBN 1-4165-5897-7
- Obama's Wars — about the Obama administration's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; (2010)
Other books, which have also been best-sellers but not #1, are:
- The Choice — about Clinton's re-election bid; (1996) ISBN 0-684-81308-4
- Maestro — about Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan; (2000) ISBN 0-7432-0412-3
- The Secret Man — about Mark Felt's disclosure, after more than thirty years, that he was Deep Throat. The book was written before Felt admitted his title, as he was sickly and Bob expected that someway or another, it would come out; (2005) ISBN 0-7432-8715-0
Newsweek has excerpted five of Woodward's books in cover stories;
60 Minutes has done segments on five; and three have been made into movies.
Criticism of Bob Woodward
Rich, Frank. "All the President's Flacks,"
The New York Times. (December 4, 2005)
Pease, Lisa. "Bob Woodward" Probe Magazine, January—February 1996 (Vol. 3 No. 2)
Pop culture references
On
The Simpsons episode "Whacking Day", Bart reads a book called
The Truth About Whacking Day, written by Bob Woodward.
In the movie
The Skulls, the character Will Beckford tries to compare himself to Woodward while reading his column in the school newspaper.
In the movie
Dick, which is about Watergate, Woodward is played by actor/comedian Will Ferrell. Woodward and Bernstein are depicted as two bickering, childish near-incompetents, small-mindedly competitive with each other.
In the movie
Wired, adapted from Woodward's book
Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, Woodward is portrayed onscreen by J. T. Walsh.
The graphic novel
Watchmen by Alan Moore is set in a version of 1985 where Nixon is a fifth-term president. A throwaway line reveals that a pair of unknown journalists, Woodward and Bernstein, were found murdered in a garage in the early 1970s. This same scenario is used as a dystopian detail in
Back to the Future 2.In the episodic video game
The End is Nigh, telling about events before the graphic novel, Rorschach and Nite Owl II find Woodward and Bernstein dead in the crime lord Underboss' car's trunk.
Woodward scripted the "Der Roachenkavalier" episode of
Hill Street Blues that aired on February 3, 1987.
In one
Bloom County series, Woodward writes a fictional expose about the late Bill the Cat's "ugly, sordid private life", based entirely on information he got out of Opus the Penguin (although Mickey Mouse and Charlie Brown also appear to have something to do with it). A three-Sunday strip-long mockumenatry based on the Woodward book was used later to explain how Bill came back to life after dying in a car crash.
In "The Long Lead Story", episode 5 of the NBC television series
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Matthew Perry's character Matt Albie is talking to reporter Martha O'Dell, played by Christine Lahti. She points to his show board and says, "The Lobster sketch isn't funny yet," to which he replies, "Tell me something else I don't know, Woodward"; a sarcastic jab at O'Dell's decision to report on a sketch-comedy show despite being a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter.
In
The Wire episode "React Quotes", a borderline-incompetent journalist is referred to as "not exactly Bob Woodward."
In multiple episodes of
Gilmore Girls they refer to Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Bernstein, and
All the President's Men.
In the film
Watchmen, The Comedian states while shooting at a riot saying " Ain't had this much fun since Woodward & Bernstein."
In the film
Assassination of a High School President, main character
Bobby Funke's style is in inspiration of Woodward & Bernstein