Theodore H White

Theodore H. White 1915-86, Americal political journalist, b. Boston. After freelancing for the Boston Globe and the Manchester Guardian, he was recruited by John Hersey to cover East Asia for Time magazine, becoming chief of its China bureau (1945). A year later he resigned in a dispute with editor Henry Luce. His The Making of the President, 1960 (1961), the first in a series of books covering presidential campaigns in an astute, dramatic reportorial style, won him the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His other books include Breach of Faith (1975), In Search of History (1978), and America in Search of Itself (1982).

White, Theodore H[arold] (1915–86), after graduation from Harvard (1938) became chief of the China Bureau of Time (1939–45) and from his observations came Thunder Out of China (1946), written with Annalee Jacoby. Work as a European correspondent led to Fire in the Ashes (1953), a study of the postwar Continent. The Mountain Road (1958) and The View from the Fortieth Floor (1960) are novels, respectively about World War II in China and a large New York news magazine. White was closely associated with President Kennedy and wrote The Making of the President 1960 (1961, Pulitzer Prize), a public and private view of the campaign that put Kennedy in the White House. Similar studies of “American politics in action” are made in identically titled books (1965, 1969, 1973) about succeeding presidential elections. Breach of Faith (1975) is about the downfall of Nixon, and Caesar at the Rubicon (1968) is a play about Caesar's seizure of power. In Search of History (1978) is a memoir.