Whence WoodStein

What emerges from a new, richly detailed biography of journalism's oddest couple is the commanding role that Robert Redford played in shaping the book "All the President's Men."

Redford was captivated by the story of Watergate, but what most interested him was the pairing of Carl Bernstein, a liberal Jewish college dropout, and Bob Woodward, a WASPy Republican former Navy officer. "How . . . could they work together? The tension intrigued me," Redford told Alicia C. Shepard, author of "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate" (Wiley).

It was Redford who inspired Woodward and Bernstein to rethink the book they were writing. He was so interested in making a movie out of their story that he kept leaving messages for them until he finally got Woodward on the phone. At his suggestion, the planned Watergate whodunit became a howdunit, detailing how the two reporters uncovered one of the biggest political scandals in US history.

It's been 30 years since "All the President's Men " was made into a movie with Redford portraying Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein. So much has been written about Watergate, you might wonder what's left to say. Yet Shepard's is the first book to draw on the 75 boxes of notebooks, fan mail, and other papers the duo sold to the University of Texas for $5 million. And she finds juicy details in unpublished interviews given when they were younger and less guarded about their privacy.

New England booksellers and book lovers lost a dear friend when Wayne A. "Rusty" Drugan Jr., 59, died Dec. 7. Until he resigned in August for health reasons, he had been executive director of the New England Independent Booksellers Association for 14 years. Before joining NEIBA, he worked in various capacities, including vice president, at Reading International bookstore in Harvard Square for 15 years.

A longtime election commissioner in Cambridge, Drugan described himself as a Rockefeller Republican. He loved to talk politics with his friends in the book world, most of whom belonged to the Other Party.

Thirteen local poets -- including Robert Pinsky, former US poet laureate , and David Barber, poetry editor at the Atlantic -- will read their own poems and others they admire at 7 p.m. Thursday , at Brookline Booksmith.

"American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work," by Susan Cheever (Simon & Schuster)

"The Boleyn Inheritance," by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone)

"The Day the Bozarts Died," by Larry Duberstein (Permanent Press)

Lois Ava-Matthew, formerly of Toadstool Bookshop in Milford, N.H., recommends "The White Earth," by Andrew McGahan (Soho), soon to be published in paperback. "This ambitious, Dickensian and gothic tale, vividly set in the plains of Queensland, Australia, is powerful and haunting. It is the story of a small boy who stands to inherit his mysterious great-uncle's crumbling estate. But it is also the uncle's story -- an unveiling of the events and terrain that has shaped this man and created the rich legacy he may pass on."

Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.