Theodore H. White once described his Harvard history professors as “a colony of storytellers,” and he would ultimately make it his profession to be, in his own words, a “storyteller of elections.” Certainly, his reportorial rigor was matched to an artistry that shaped facts into stories with riveting effect, never more than in his study of the Kennedy-Nixon battle, the first of his four Making of the President volumes. Published little more than a half year after the culmination of the events it narrates, White’s account of the 1960 electoral contest between Kennedy and Nixon was a groundbreaking work of political journalism. Offering unusual insight into campaign strategy, demographic trends, and policy issues, and exhibiting zeal for the political process as well as sympathetic appreciation for the personalities of politicians, White’s Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle was both comprehensive and dramatic.
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