Great Works of Nonfiction: All The President's Men and Endurace

By Sophia Doshi

In the past year and a half, I've had the pleasure of reading two nonfiction books that have really stood out in my mind: All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, and Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. These books are about completely different subject matters—ATPM is about the story of the two journalists who exposed the Watergate scandal that happened back in the summer of '72, and Endurance is about the literal endurance of 28 men shipwrecked in the Antarctic. 

Of course, since these books are not related at all, you may be wondering: why is she grouping them in one post? Well, here's your answer: 1) I don't feel motivated enough to come up with two separate creative names to headline two individual posts for each of these books; and 2) they both resounded to me in the same way. When I say the latter, I mean that I usually loathe reading nonfiction, as I've always associated it with schoolwork and mandated reading, which I strongly dislike doing. Yet reading these two stories, both recommended to me by my father, left me with the same feeling: that humans have indomitable spirits that somehow resist the persistent cruelty of the world around them, and that these stories are so incredible that they seem like fiction.

In both of these books, the determination of both parties that were written about simply wowed me. Woodward and Bernstein stayed with the Watergate story even when they received backlash, threats, and 'no' from all types of people who could have furthered their knowledge of the scandal. Ernest Shackleton (Captain of the Endurance ship) managed to rescue his entire crew by traveling nearly 1,000 miles in a small, wooden rescue boat after spending over a year traversing the brutal Antarctic environment. Of course, in reducing these two incredible stories into a mere sentence that does them very little justice (I highly recommend that you read both), I have almost no way to describe the scope of the achievements of the people involved.  So, as a person who normally avoids nonfiction, these two books are some of the greatest nonfiction pieces I've read to date.