Today's Nonfiction post is on The Watergate Girl by Jill Wine-Banks. It is 258 pages long and is published by Henry Holt and Company. The cover is a picture of Wine-Banks from the Watergate Trail. The intended reader is someone who is interested in American history and true crime. There is mild foul language, discussion of sex and sexuality, and discussion of violence in this book. The story is told from first person close of Wine-Banks. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- Obstruction of justice, the specter of impeachment, sexism at work, shocking revelations: Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside her trial by fire as a Watergate prosecutor.
It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely thirty years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts—and prevailed.
In The Watergate Girl, Jill Wine-Banks opens a window on this troubled time in American history. It is impossible to read about the crimes of Richard Nixon and the people around him without drawing parallels to today’s headlines. The book is also the story of a young woman who sought to make her professional mark while trapped in a failing marriage, buffeted by sexist preconceptions, and harboring secrets of her own. Her house was burgled, her phones were tapped, and even her office garbage was rifled through.
At once a cautionary tale and an inspiration for those who believe in the power of justice and the rule of law, The Watergate Girl is a revelation about our country, our politics, and who we are as a society..
Review- A wonderful memoir from a woman who went through fire but came out to the other end a better lawyer and a strong role model. Jill Wine-Banks had been a trial lawyer for a few years when she was tapped to become a prosecutor on the special Watergate prosecution team; which was designed to determine what had been done, what had been covered up, and who was at fault. Wine-Banks takes us from the beginning of being tapped for the prosecution all the way through to the end and we see what she did with her career after. There are lots of notes so if you want to go and follow up to learn more about the Watergate trial and all the people around it, it will be easy to do. Wine-Banks is an excellent writer, she has an engaging narrative style, and can convey not only what she was thinking and feeling but helps the reader understand the others around her were thinking too by the fact that she can still interview them and ask them what they were going through at the same time. A benefit to this book as opposed to other Watergate books is that Wine-Banks was one of the prosecutors, she sat at the prosecution table and cross questioned and interviewed witnesses throughout the entirety of the trial. So if you would like to have special insight into the Watergate trial I would highly recommend this memoir.
I give this memoir a Five out of Five Stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrow this book from my local Library.
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