A Good Life: A Newspapering and Other Adventures

Written by Ben Bradlee

Narrated by Ben Bradlee

The classic New York Times bestselling memoir by legendary Executive Editor of The Washington Post Ben Bradlee—with a new foreword by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and an afterword by Sally Quinn.

The most important, glamorous, and famous newspaperman of modern times traces his path from Harvard to the battles of the South Pacific to the pinnacle of success at The Washington Post. After Bradlee took the helm in 1965, he and his reporters transformed the Post into one of the most influential and respected news publications in the world, reinvented modern investigative journalism, won eighteen Pulitzer Prizes, and redefined the way news is reported, published, and read.

His leadership and investigative drive during the Watergate scandal led to the downfall of a president, and his challenge to the government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers changed the course of American history.

Bradlee’s timeless memoir is a fascinating, irreverent, earthy, and revealing look at America and American journalism in the twentieth century—a “sassy, sometimes eye-poppingly, engrossing autobiography...must reading” (The New York Times Book Review).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Nov 1, 1995
• ISBN: 9780743547932

Ben Bradlee

Ben Bradlee was Executive Editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991.  

Reviews for A Good Life

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To read A Good Life: Newpapering and Other Adventures is like sitting down with Mr. Bradlee and having a cup of coffee and a glazed doughnut. Easy. Warm. Inviting. And, depending on how sticky the doughnut (or Bradlee's situation) potentially very funny. He unfolds his life with in twinkle in his eye and you can tell he looks back on his experiences with warmth and humor. Speaking of unfolding his life, one of the elements of Bradlee's biography that I appreciated the most was the fact he did not go too far back into his family's genealogy. I did not need to know where his great-great-great-great grandparents came from to appreciate Bradlee's own beginnings. Before you are even 100 pages into the story, Bradlee is twenty years old, married and in the Navy (in fact, his wedding and entry into the Navy happened on the very same day). He moves quickly through his rise in journalism and subsequent employment with Newsweek & the Washington Post. Just as decisively he describes his marriages, first to Jean Salton, then to Tony Pinchot and finally, Sally Quinn. Probably one of the more intriguing sections of A Good Life wasn't Watergate as you might expect, but rather Bradlee's time with John F. Kennedy as friend and reporter before and during Kennedy's Presidential career.As expected, Bradlee spends a great deal of time talking about President Nixon, Watergate and the work that went into uncovering the lies. This is where Bradlee slows history down and works through the details methodically. But, he also shares some other not-so-crowning Post moments. Again, there is that honesty about all he reveals.