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| Name: | Theodore White | |||
| Birth: | May 06 1915 | |||
| Death: | May 09 1986 | |||
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Theodore Harold White (May 6, 1915 – May 9, 1986) was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, best known for his accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential elections.
Reporter
Born May 6, 1915, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of a Jewish lawyer named David White. Theodore H. White received a scholarship to Harvard in 1934, based upon his academic achievements at the famous Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1932.
White graduated from Harvard in 1938 summa cum laude (Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. was a classmate), with a degree in Chinese history, the first honors student of John K. Fairbank. He went to Chungking (Chongqing), China's wartime capital on a fellowship,later became a freelance reporter after being an adviser to Chinese Propaganda Dept for a short while. When Henry R. Luce, China born founder and publisher of Time Magazine, came to China the following year, he and White hit it off. White became the China correspondent for Time during the war. White chafed at the restrictions put on his reporting by the censorship of the Nationalist government and the rewriting of his stories by the editors at Time.
Although he maintained great respect for Henry Luce, he resigned and returned home to write, along with Annalee Jacoby, a best selling description of China at war and in crisis, Thunder Out of China. The book described the incompetence and corruption of the Nationalist government and described the power of the rising Communist Party. The authors called upon Americans to come to terms with this reality. The Introduction warned “In Asia there are a billion people who are tired of the world as it is; they live such terrible bondage that they have nothing to lose but their chains.... Less than a thousand years ago Europe lived this way; then Europe revolted... The people of Asia are going through the same process.” (p. xix).
White then served as European correspondent for the Overseas News Agency (1948–50) and for The Reporter (1950–53)
He returned to his wartime experience in the novel The Mountain Road (1956), which deals with the retreat of a team of Americans in the face of the Japanese offensive. Although the Americans begin with a sympathy for the Chinese, their mission ends with the burning and destruction of a Chinese village.
Making of the President series
With experience in analyzing foreign cultures from his time abroad, White took up the challenge of analyzing American culture with the books The Making of the President, 1960 (1961), The Making of the President, 1964 (1965), The Making of the President, 1968 (1969), and The Making of the President, 1972 (1973), all analyzing at American presidential elections. The first of these was both a bestseller and a critical success, winning the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. It remains the most influential publication about the election that made John F. Kennedy the President. The later presidential books sold well but failed to have as great an effect, partly because other authors were by then publishing about the same topics, and White's larger-than-life style of storytelling became less fashionable during the 1960s and '70s.
Shortly after JFK's death, White obtained an exclusive interview with Jacqueline Kennedy. During this interview Mrs. Kennedy spoke at length on a personal level about her husband and what she hoped would be his legacy. Her comments inspired White to compare the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy with the legend of Camelot, for which Life was also acclaimed. White covered the assassination and funeral extensively, also for Life. White was the best known reporter at Andrews Air Force Base on November 22, 1963, when the body of the assassinated president arrived there.
On May 15, 1986 White suffered a sudden stroke and died in New York City. He was survived by two of his children, Heyden White Rostow and David Fairbank White.
