CNN announced this evening that Carl Bernstein had joined the network as an analyst…

Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Carl Bernstein, best known for his reporting work with Bob Woodward about the Watergate scandal, will join CNN this election season as an analyst, it was announced today by Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. He will appear on the full line-up of CNN’s broadcasts and election coverage.

Most recently, Bernstein wrote the best-selling biography A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a detailed portrait of the former first lady and current Democratic presidential candidate. The book, published by Knopf, garnered reviews as a thoroughly reported and balanced biography and was recently selected as one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2007, ranking in the Top 5 of customers’ picks for biography. (See attachment of selected reviews.)

“Carl stands out as one of the pre-eminent journalists of our time and a respected, well-connected commentator on the American political scene,” Klein said. “We are delighted to have him as part of the Best Political Team on Television and look forward to his insightful analysis.”

“CNN has demonstrated time and again a sincere effort to go beyond the political horserace,” Bernstein said. “My hope is to examine the real lives and records of the candidates and look at how these people – and their political machines – try to win votes, influence the media and use the electoral system to their maximum advantage. I’m thrilled at the opportunity to have CNN’s broad reach in doing so.”

At The Washington Post, Bernstein and colleague Bob Woodward uncovered the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of then-President Richard Nixon and earned the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize for public service. Bernstein is also the author, with Woodward, of All the President’s Men and The Final Days, and, with Marco Politi, of His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time. He is also the author of Loyalties, a memoir about his parents during McCarthy–era Washington.

Bernstein has written for Vanity Fair, where he serves as a contributing editor, Time, USA Today, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic. He was a Washington bureau chief and correspondent for ABC News. At The Washington Post, Bernstein also was a part-time rock critic, and he still occasionally writes about music.