The first of these, She Said: Breaking the sexual harassment story that helped ignite a movement, is from investigative reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who in October 2017 scooped the first story about Weinstein’s abuses and his history of covering them up. For this exposé, and their follow-up reporting, they won the Pulitzer Prize. Kantor and Twohey’s riveting account of how they broke the story is a welcome addition to #MeToo literature, though it could have been otherwise. What else is there to say about Harvey Weinstein that they and others (like Ronan Farrow, who was investigating the story at the same time) have not already told us? It turns out quite a bit. She Said is not a rehash but a masterclass in old-fashioned investigative reporting in the digital age. As we learn, it takes a lot of work to bring a man as influential, wealthy, and well connected as Weinstein to public accountability. (Weinstein will go to trial in January 2020 on multiple charges of rape, sexual assault, and intimidation.)

She Said is admirably taut and focused. The bulk of the book is devoted to the Weinstein case and what it took to break it. Kantor and Twohey were not the first to pursue the story, and the obstacles they faced included a trail of non-disclosure agreements, a phalanx of lawyers (including self-styled feminist crusaders Gloria Allred and Lisa Bloom), and Black Cube, a covert Israeli organisation hired by Weinstein to run interference. Weinstein was further enabled by a wider culture still tilted in favour of powerful men and against any woman who speaks out about sexual abuse. These are weighty themes, ripe for digression. Sensibly, Kantor and Twohey resist psychological scrutiny of Weinstein; they let the facts and those who know him condemn him instead. These include Bob Weinstein, who, in an email to his brother, later obtained by Twohey, refers to at ‘least one hundred’ occasions when employees came to his office to report verbal and emotional abuse from Weinstein. Bob’s complicity is stark; there’s no need for Kantor and Twohey to labour the point.

The title She Said is a pointed recasting of the he-said/she-said dynamic that continues to capsize legal cases and public discourse. It is also a mission statement. Kantor and Twohey foreground the voices of women who spoke on the record, but they also include, where possible, those who did not. All of these women struggled with their decision about whether or not to go public. They include famous actors like Paltrow and Ashley Judd, Weinstein employees who lost or left their jobs, and women outside the entertainment industry, such as Kim Lawson, a McDonald’s employee whose case Kantor profiled to much less fanfare. Without universalising #MeToo (they are not blind to class, race, or fame as mitigating factors), Kantor and Twohey extract larger meaning from the Weinstein example. They want the reader to know what the stakes are.

Kantor and Twohey describe the #MeToo aftermath of Weinstein as a ‘reckoning’, with multiple and unforeseen effects. These include Christine Blasey Ford becoming ‘an instant symbol for women who had been abused’ and a ‘focal point for the backlash’ once she went public with her account of allegedly being raped at a party by then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers in 1982. Kantor and Twohey did not break the Ford story; as they reveal, The New York Times was pursuing it at the same time as The Washington Post, but did not go ahead for lack of corroborating evidence, the same problem the FBI purportedly encountered when they investigated the case (though notably the FBI did not interview Ford or Kavanaugh). Their point here is not to doubt Ford, whom they clearly admire and find credible, or to champion The New York Times as a beacon of quality journalism (though there’s a bit of that). Rather, they narrate Ford’s bruising experience as a halting form of progress, post #MeToo. Even Donald Trump praised Dr Ford’s testimony.

Christine Blasey Ford is sworn in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, 2018 (Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP/Ninian Reid/Flickr)

The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An investigation, by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, opens with the Kavanaugh’s successful nomination to the Supreme Court, but the reporters do not linger there. Pogrebin and Kelly hesitate to make bold claims about the significance of their book, but they also have aspirations beyond thorough treatment of the #MeToo controversy that threatened Kavanaugh’s nomination. As they point out, Kavanaugh – a ‘life-long Republican and an observant Catholic’ – ‘had worked his whole life towards a Supreme Court nomination’. Unlike Weinstein, he was not a serial predator, though like Weinstein he also liked to promote himself as a champion of women (in Kavanaugh’s case, somewhat more convincingly). They endeavour to comprehend Kavanaugh, who, despite a long career in public service, is presented as a somewhat elusive figure. (Unlike Ford, Kavanaugh declined to be interviewed.)

During their ten-month investigation, Pogrebin and Kelly tapped into their élite networks to situate Kavanaugh, and his accuser, Ford, among their people – alumni of the Washington, DC private-school system (where Kavanaugh and Ford were both educated) and Yale (Kavanaugh and Pogrebin are graduates), as well as Ford’s friends and supporters in the Silicon Valley enclave Palo Alto. They also spoke to Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate who shared with The New Yorker her memory of Kavanaugh allegedly exposing himself to her at a party.

As a fresh take on Kavanaugh and, to a lesser extent, on Ford, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh does offer some illuminating, if occasionally claustrophobic, context. Private schools, Ivy League colleges, the right-leaning Federalist Society, exclusive golf clubs (Kavanaugh’s and Ford’s fathers are members of the same one), Palo Alto – these are privileged, cloistered worlds, which Pogrebin and Kelly describe in sometimes unnecessary detail. Some features discussed, like the binge-drinking culture Kavanaugh enthusiastically participated in as a young man, do have a wider salience that enriches their analysis.

Unlike She Said, however, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh never quite transcends reportage, despite the chapter headings in Latin. It drags in parts, only really hitting its stride in the last chapters covering the hearings. Reflecting on Kavanaugh’s intractable testimony – his refusal ‘in the age of #MeToo’ to apologise for any harm done to Ford or to acknowledge the ‘possibility that he could have been involved in the Ford incident but not remembered it’ – Pogrebin and Kelly offer a persuasive explanation for Kavanaugh’s uncharacteristic tirade. ‘In the age of Trump,’ they argue, ‘a nuanced response would have doomed Kavanaugh’s nomination.’ Only time will tell whether Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court judge, continues to pander to Trump and his base. As for Ford, her testimony led to a dramatic spike in sexual assault disclosures, but she remains unsafe and has not gone back to work.