"I was a terrible student,” legendary investigative journalist Carl Bernstein says with a smile. “The last time I got decent grades was in fifth grade. I’m good at doing things I want to do. I’m not good at doing things other people want me to do.”

It’s autumn in Manhattan and Bernstein is in his apartment overlooking Central Park, reflecting via Zoom on his scrappy youth and storied career, and how he went from being academically “hopeless” to a formidable reporter whose 1972 coverage of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post, with Bob Woodward, brought down President Richard Nixon and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Bernstein started in journalism in 1960, when, as a 16-year-old high schooler, he scored a job as a copyboy at the Washington Star. He worked there until 1965, fetching coffee, taking dictation, and trying to get his byline in print.

This formative period is chronicled in Bernstein’s exciting memoir, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, out in January from Holt, with a first printing of 100,000 copies. It’s the author’s sixth book—others include biographies of Pope John Paul II and Hillary Clinton—and is being published nearly 50 years after All the President’s Men, the bestseller about Watergate that Bernstein cowrote with Woodward, which was turned into an Oscar-winning movie.

“Pretty much everything I know, certainly about reporting and journalism, and also about life, I learned at the Star,” says Bernstein. Chasing History transports readers to a ’60s newsroom—with its click-clacking typewriters and plumes of cigarette smoke—and follows young Bernstein, notepad in hand, as he covers major events like the inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the 1963 March on Washington. “I got the greatest seat in the country at a momentous time in our history,” he recalls. “I soaked up everything.”

“Those five years gave me a sense of myself that I never had,” Bernstein says. “You see this kid who’s teetering in life—who hasn’t found himself. But the people at the Star became my family.” He interviewed dozens of friends and colleagues from that era for the book. “It was an emotional experience. I’ve carried these people with me for 60-something years, and, in that sense, there’s a love letter there, and gratitude.”

Essayist Lance Morrow, a Wall Street Journal contributor and the Henry Grunwald senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, worked with Bernstein at the Star. “Carl owes me, from those days, about 10 cartons of Marlboros,” Morrow says. “We smoked too much, and Carl was constantly bumming cigarettes.”

Morrow was one of the first people Bernstein called when he decided to write the book. “Carl is Huckleberry Finn,” he says. “He’s got a touch of the juvenile delinquent. He’s an idealist and a realist. There was mischief in his approach to everything, but he was also an incredibly serious student of journalism.”

Born in D.C., on Valentine’s Day in 1944, Bernstein grew up in a house filled with tension and secrets, which laid the groundwork for his career. His left-leaning parents, who championed civil liberties and attended sit-ins, were affiliated in the 1940s with the Communist Party—a subject Bernstein discusses in his 1989 book Loyalties. The FBI kept a file on the family and showed up at Bernstein’s bar mitzvah to take down the license plate numbers of guests. “I disliked the secrecy; it made me uncomfortable,” says Bernstein, for whom work became a haven. “Secrecy is the enemy.”

Bernstein joined the Post in 1966. By then he had finished high school, barely, and had dropped out of the University of Maryland. (Chasing History includes a photo of his F-riddled college transcript.) In 1972, he and Woodward began investigating a break-in by burglars at the Watergate office complex, which led to their explosive reporting on the Nixon administration’s attempt to cover it up.

“There’s a great tradition of investigative journalism in this country,” Bernstein says. “What had not happened in the modern era was a couple of shoe-leather commonsense reporters knocking on doors at night in the political space. And why did we go out at night? We knew there were secrets. Well, you won’t find out what those are if you knock on people’s doors during the day, at the office, when their bosses are there.”

Ken Auletta, a journalist and media critic for the New Yorker, says, “Watergate exposed a president of the United States who was corrupt and scary in his misuse of power. It was a brilliant piece of investigate reporting that had a profound impact on the presidency. And it emboldened journalists to do more investigative reporting. It probably also made journalists and the public more cynical, more disbelieving of public officials, and more believing that they randomly and frequently lied to us.”

Bernstein became famous after Watergate, and that wasn’t always easy to manage. “There was a period of my life when I didn’t handle it well,” he admits. “I needed to do some readjusting. I had to go through a maturation process.”

In 1976, at the height of that fame, Bernstein married writer and director Nora Ephron, with whom he has two sons. Their divorce in 1980 became tabloid fodder and material for Ephron’s 1983 autobiographical novel, Heartburn (which she later adapted for film), about a woman and her philandering journalist husband.

“It was very difficult for me and for the kids for a while there,” Bernstein says. “Happily, Nora and I eventually made our peace. Real peace. As parents, especially. Moving through it took more than a few days, but it worked out.”

After leaving the Post in 1977, Bernstein worked in broadcast news (at ABC and CBS) and is now a contributor at CNN, where he continues to call out abuses of power in politics.

“Carl is a titan of American journalism,” says his book editor, Sarah Crichton. “If you look back in time, how many journalists can you name? It’s a handful, and his name will live on. He’s absolutely delightful, and he can drive you crazy, because he’s relentless in his pursuit of making everything better. He’s always gunning for the insight that’s been overlooked.”

Bernstein says, “Perfectionism is a character defect I have. I sometimes don’t let myself be satisfied.”

He cherishes the eight years he spent writing about his early newsroom education. “My experience at the Star has lightened and enlightened my life,” he explains. “I loved telling this story. I was transported in the process to being that kid. Writing is a mystical thing. I’m still that person. I just happen to be 77 years old, but that kid is with me.”

Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.