Profile of Theodore H. White on Famous Like Me

Theodore Harold White (1915–1986) was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, best known for his acclaimed accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential elections.

Born May 6, 1915, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of a Jewish lawyer, White received a scholarship to Harvard in 1934, based upon his academic achievements at the famous Boston Latin high school, which he graduated from in 1932.

White graduated from Harvard in 1938, with a degree in Chinese history, and the following year, became one of Time's first foreign correspondents, being stationed in East Asia from 1939 to 1945. He then served as European correspondent for the Overseas News Agency (1948–50) and for The Reporter (1950–53).

With experience in analysing foreign cultures from his time abroad, White took up up the challenge of analysing 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 looking at American elections. They received a great deal of critical acclaim, and the first book won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. He later went on to analyze the elections of 1968 and 1972 in later books.

White's exclusive interview with Jacqueline Kennedy, after her husband's death, in which White compared the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy with the legend of Camelot, for Life was also acclaimed. White covered the assassination and funeral extensively, also for Life. These all make one point clear: White was a very close friend of Kennedy.

White was the coauthor (with Annalee Jacoby) of Thunder Out of China (1946) and also wrote Fire in the Ashes (1953), The Mountain Road (1958), Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (1975), the autobiographical In Search of History: A Personal Adventure (1978), and America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, 1956–1980 (1982). He died on May 15, 1986, in New York City, New York.

Criticism of White

In her book, Theodore H. White and Journalism As Illusion, Joyce Hoffman alleges that White's "personal ideology undermined professional objectivity" (according to the review of her work by Library Journal). She bases this conclusion on what she alleged to be conscious mythmaking on behalf of at least three of White's journalistic subjects:

• Diplomat David Bruce, in a profile
• President Kennedy, in The Making of the President and subsequent works
• Chinese Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, for Time

The author alleges that White self-censored any information embarrasing to his subjects, and tended to overlook their flaws to portray them as heroes.

Ironically, White later repudiated his views of Chiang, and it has been separately alleged that he converted to using quite similar types of mythmaking and hero worship in favor of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, some of which were later published in his In Search of History.

External Links

• Theodore H. White
• Amazon.com's page on Hoffman's work and editorial and user reviews

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