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In Search of History

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In Search of History, by Theodore H. White is an excellent and well written book chronicling not only the life of this astounding reporter and writer, but also giving you an inside view into the U.S. from his birth in 1915 to the publishing of the book in 1963. In his early years (1915-1938) he details to a full extent the Boston in which he grew up, as well as going into a small extent about New England and the rest of the U.S. In these few fascinating chapters, he details the history of immigration to the U.S., and how the various ethnicities and neighborhoods functioned. For me in particular, who was only born in the last decade, this view of an America long gone and far removed was both fascinating and informative.

In the next section, after completion of his education and after receiving employment as a reporter from Harry Luce at Time, White travels to Asia (1938-1945) to detail the three way struggle between the Japanese, Chiang K'ai-Shek (and his Nationalist forces), and Mao Tse-tung (and his Communist forces), with the U.S. supporting K'ai-Shek. While this era in China is all common knowledge and part of history, to see it the way that White writes it is to see it in an entirely new light. An example of this is when White takes the reader into the party conference (Communist), and reveals many details of Communist thinking that are rather unknown in the West. Also, here, as in almost any situation, White managed to ease his way into the confidence of these men of power, and therefore many parts of what he reveals in this book are not well known, such as how close the U.S. actually came to acieving harmony between the Nationalist and Communist forces. However, White's views on the matter of China differed sharply from those of his employer, Harry Luce (then owner of the Time-Life conglomerate), and so shortly after he left Asia he quit.

He next found employment from a variety of small papers and went to Europe (1948-1953) to detail the demilitarization of Germany and the reconstruction of the occupied countries. This section provides an excellent look at an era in history that has been forgotten by the majority of Americans. Take, for example, the European Joint Defense Force. This was a proposal under which all of the armies of the European nations would be joined as one. Long forgotten, this book sheds some new light on this fascinating proposal.

Next, White returns home to America (1954-1963), where he publishes several books. He next follows Senator John F. Kennedy through his campaign for president up to his assassination. He was an intimate of Kennedy's, and this section of his book provides an excellent look at that era. He tells of the tear-filled meeting between himself and Jacqueline Kennedy shortly after President Kennedy's death in which he wrote the story that was to label the Kennedy years as the "Camelot" era of American history.

This book provides an excellent and in depth look at the world from 1915-1963, from White's (a liberal's) point of view. I recommend this book to the casual, interested, or scholarly reader.

Theodore H. White (1915-1986) is widely regarded as one of the greatest journalists of the World War Two "G.I." generation. TIME magazine once called him the "godfather of modern political reporting", and he is best known for his classic "Making of the President" series of books. From 1960 to 1980 White covered every presidential campaign and observed the political leaders who participated in them. He became so well-known that candidates from John Kennedy to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan gave him unprecedented access to the inner workings of their campaigns. White's first book in the series - the bestselling "Making of the President 1960" (which covered the Kennedy-Nixon contest) earned him the pulitzer prize. Yet White was far more than just a political reporter, as this marvelous memoir proves. By 1976 White had grown both tired and bored of covering presidential politics, and so instead of doing another book on the '76 campaign, he decided to write his autobiography. In "In Search of History" White offers a superb chronicle of his remarkable life and career. Born and raised in a poor Jewish slum in Boston, White came from a family of intellectual Jewish immigrants who nonetheless experienced grinding poverty. In his youth White was in many ways a child prodigy - he was both brilliant and energetic. He sold newspapers to help his family pay the bills, attended Harvard University on a scholarship and became fluent in Chinese. In 1938 White, only 23, flew to China to cover that nation's heroic resistance to the Japanese invasion. He was soon hired by Henry Luce's powerful TIME-LIFE magazines to be their Asia correspondent, and for awhile he was Luce's star reporter. White vividly describes his experiences in China and Asia during World War Two, from a devastating famine to his meetings with legendary Chinese leaders such as General Chiang Kai-shek (whom he despised) and Communist leaders Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung (with whom he formed a wary respect). He also met the great American generals of the Asian theater of the war, such as Douglas MacArthur and Joseph Stilwell. White seems to have been present at a vast number of great historic events, and among his best descriptions is that of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in 1945. After the war White moved to Europe, where he covered that continent's attempts to rebuild and unite and America's efforts to help. In the fifties White began covering American politics, and then in the sixties he both covered and became a close friend of the Kennedy family - thus becoming (as he reluctantly admits) emotionally closer to his subject than he should have been. White's closeness to the Kennedys was dramatically revealed in late November 1963, when Jackie Kennedy personally chose him to discuss the intimate details of the assassination in Dallas and to write a "final word" about JFK. It was White's "Epilogue" (published in LIFE), that created the legend that Kennedy's Presidency was "Camelot" - a word which Jacqueline Kennedy insisted be used in describing her husband's administration. It is apparent from "In Search of History" that White led an extraordinary life and had many adventures (and misadventures) along the way. He is an engrossing writer, and despite the book's length I never grew bored or restless. Among the thousands of journalists of the twentieth century, White almost certainly belongs among the top ten, and this autobiography proves why. Highly recommended!

An incredibly broad overview of one man's very exciting career in journalism, Theodore White's "In Search Of History" puts us at his shoulder as he explores war-torn China and reconstructed Europe, does battle with leftist zealots and right-wing hoods, and apotheosizes the ephemerality of the world and the fleeting cast populating it. Any journalist, or one thinking of a career in journalism, owes it to him- or herself to read this.

One might subtitle this: "Enough About Those Presidents, Let's Talk About Me." By 1978, he had ceased producing his widely-read and respected "Making Of The President" books, deciding he needed to figure out what it had been all about. Such a scenario would bode ill except White lived an interesting life he shares here with passion and candor, focusing always on what it meant for him to be a journalist, lighting on telling moments in time and raising questions about his own possible shortcomings and oversights that help lift this above most journalist autobiographies.

Starting out a poor Jewish boy in Boston during World War I, White was a Horatio Alger story who made his way to Harvard with a gritty combination of hard work and belief in himself and the country that produced him. Though best-known today for "The Making Of" series, White had been a reporter for more than 20 years before that, cutting his teeth at Henry Luce's Time/Life, where the focus was always on individual "makers of history." Though he fell out with Luce, he held fast to that "compelling personality" concept throughout his career, latching on to various figures he met with a curiosity so immersive it bordered on idolatry.

"What frightened me then, and frightens me still, is how very few men it takes at the head of any state to give it its character of good or evil, of freedom, tyranny, torture, butchery or benevolence," he writes, reflecting on postwar Germany but taking in the world.

For those disposed to accept this viewpoint, White offers vivid profiles of such unique and complex characters as Luce, Chou En-Lai, Chaing K'ai-Chek, Averell Harriman, and especially John F. Kennedy, of whom White says: "Those who knew him well loved him too much...The man I followed wrapped me in such affection that I have never been able completely to escape." Those who note this was part of White's problem have to acknowledge the fact that they, like so many in the last 40 or so years, are drawing on White's own reportage in making their conclusions.

What makes White great to read is the apparent absence of anything else interesting going on in his life. He writes a little about women, his first sexual experience and an early wife who kept him working by spending his money. But you get the feeling he was more devoted to us his readers than anyone he knew in his own life. No detail is too small or too squalid for White to bore in on, and stick with long enough to make come alive in our hands, whether it is poverty-stricken children being worked to death in a Shanghai filature or the quality of napery on a French dinner table.

Reading him is like having a curtain pulled back on episodes that come off stiff and square in history books, discovering not only the pulsing, bleeding life behind them but something of the poverty of journalism today, at least where imaginative reconstruction and non-doctrinaire analysis are concerned.

He also gets into the stories behind the stories, of his fights to get Luce and other editors to publish his view of the world rather than theirs, of the logistical challenges of being at the scene of great events, of helping Jackie Kennedy craft the enduring myth of her husband's Camelot, and his lasting belief in the importance of his work. Jayson Blair and Jared Paul Stern, take note: "Contacts are the only bankable capital on which a journalist can ever draw."

I wish I could write this review with something other than a ponderous ministerial tone, give some hint of the joy and humor to be found, the marvelous turns of phrase sprinkled throughout this large book like sand on a beach, and properly credit "In Search Of History's" Dickens-like method of drawing you into the world he inhabits, until you feel like you know as well as he ever did his fellows and his surroundings.

Suffice to say this is White's most enjoyable and readable book despite its length, and next to "Making Of The President 1968," his best. Along with that other White's book, "The Elements Of Style," this is something no writer of worldly affairs can be without.

This is a wonderful tour of the 20C, to about 1970, by a reporter who followed stories as they emerged in the most important places and with the most powerful people. White was entirely self-made, an energetic and talented man who had some luck but mostly worked very hard.

Although many journalists came to scorn White for his nostalgic style late in life - rightfully in my opinion - there is no doubt that early on he was a great reporter of courage and idealism. You see him begin reporting for Luce (and Time) while on a fellowship in China, fresh out of Harvard, when he got into the innermost circle of communist leaders after becoming disillusioned with Chiang Kai Shek. There he met Mao, Zhou EnLai, and scores of others who would go on to great power - the reader feels like he gets to know them personally. He then wrote a bestseller on the experience.

In a typical move that showed his nose for a great story and a pioneer of in-depth investigations, White then moved to Paris, where he chronicled the post-war reconstruction under the Marchall Plan. He then returned to the US and started his outstanding series on US elections, the Making of the President. After losing a job at Colliers, and at great financial risk, he made his living almost entirely from books.

This is a amazing and trailblazing career, thick with historical detail, but this book is also a memoir that lets you in on what made him tick: he witnessed his father beaten down by the Depression, but heard from him that China would have a revolution that would change the world. This was the source of his original inspiration for China. There are many asides that are both charming and fascinating, such as the time he lost his virginity in China, but also about how he works and what he remembers of certain scenes, such as the moment Zhou EnLai got him to eat pork.

Warmly recommended, in particular for aspiring writers (like myself when I read it!).

This is one of those rare authors that can make an exciting history jump off the pages at you. And White was lucky: he saw some of the most interesting events of the 20th century, up close and with access to the principal players. The latter part of the book, where he describes the inner circle of the Kennedy camp on election night, 1960, is one of the best passages I have ever read.

This book reviews the authors life from grade school on and details his collision with some of history's greatest personalities. From Mao to Kennedy, Mr. White's travels brought him to the crossroads of history in the bloodiest century. I read the book in virtually one setting and found it hard to put down and treasure the experience to this day, almost ten years later.

One of the themes of this book is White's belief that history has heroes, individuals who make a real difference, and change things for good. White does not speak or think of himself as a hero, but I believe that many readers of this book will come to the conclusion that White himself was a kind of hero, a hero in serving the American public through first- rate eye-witness imaginative Journalism.
In this fast- paced and often exciting recollection White tells of his boyhood on Erie Street in Boston. His father an unemployed lawyer dies when he is sixteen, and the family lives in great poverty. He works hard and goes from Boston Latin School to Harvard. He tells the story of remarkable people he meets along the way including his great mentor in Chinese Studies at Harvard John Fairbanks. White is a person who deeply appreciates other human beings, and one of the best features of this book is his portraits of many remarkable human beings. Among these are those he will meet in his first real journalistic assignment in the Far EAst , General Stillwell, Claire Chenault , General Douglas MacArthur.
White has great sympathy for the Chinese people and tells the story of the inept war conducted against the Japanese by Chiang- Kai-Shek, a villian in White's eyes. One of the stories within the stories, and one which alone justifies calling White as hero, relates to the great famine in Hunan province. Singlehandedly White went to investigate this , and it was his reports to Time Magazine and a chilling conversation he had with Chiang - Kai- Shek which led to massive supplies being sent to the province, and the famine ending. White also tells of his visits to Mao, and in retrospect it can be said that he treats him far too gently. Mao has emerged as one of the most evil mass- murderers in human history and White does not even begin to hint at anything wrong with him.
White's reporting on China, especially his criticism of the Nationalists leads him into conflict with his boss Henry Luce. White leaves off writing for 'Time' and eventually comes to write the four 'Making the President ' volumes which is what he will be most known for. Towards the close of the book he tells of his special relationship with President Kennedy who he deeply admired, and tells too of the famous interview the President's widow summoned White to , shortly after the President's death when she was deeply worried about his place in history.
There are many extraordinarily well- written and moving passages in the book. One of the best is White's description of the Japanese surrender to General MacArthur and how at the very moment of the surrender there suddenly appears in the sky squadrons and squadrons of American planes, a signal of the great American power that won the war.
White talks quite a bit about the craft of writing, and distinguishes the journalist limited in vision by being so involved in the factual realities as they are happening, and the historian who can through time and distance order and see things the journalist cannot. Clearly White himself combines both these capacities in this work.

Want a amazing history lesson from someone that actually lived and grew up into the changes of these times... what a great reflection of the past as a juxtaposition of our present and near future...

We now live in a time when people can admit this is the worst economic time since the depression and not freak out... yet! Never hopefully...

T.White is also a great writer and journalist.

.......how a young man's decision to add Chinese to his college curriculum changed forever his life, placing him at all the pivotal points of history in his time....meeting the men with the visionary ideas........and writing of this journey so exceptionally we all experience the intimacies of every moment.

I really LOVE this book, have read it several times! I can't believe one person was able to do all of these fascinating things and tell about it in such an engaging manner. The material in China in WWII is probably the most fascinating and tells stories about the Chinese leadership that most westerners don't know. The McCarthy era and the Kennedy campaign and assasinations also were riveting.