In Search of History

Theodore White was a journalist and historian who reported on Asia during the war and from Europe during reconstruction, then wrote the "Making of the President" series. In this book he mixes autobiography and history in an attempt to define the place of America in history. This book tells about

Henry Luce, Time, Chang Chi Chek, Madame Chek, the chinese communist, the Japanese, and in Teddy White's wonderful jounalist style.

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LibraryThing member wfzimmerman

Earlier this year I published MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 2008 by political reporter Mark Curtis. The design for that book was a conscious homage to White's immensely successful MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series. So I was thrilled by come across this book, White's autobiography and summation, at a recent

garage sale.

It is a deeper, more insightful, and sadder book than I remembered. White had several different fascinating lives, including ten years as a China hand, ten for Henry Luce's TIME, and another twenty as the famous author the MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series. He wrote this book from a sense of profound disillusionment with American politics, which may be part of the reason that the book is written in an unusual style with mostly first person interrupted periodically with stilted yet touching third-person views of himself.

My current copy is very aged so I probably will not keep it, but keep an eye out for a high quality first of this or any of his earlier books, including the China and Europe books.

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LibraryThing member carterchristian1

I read this after discovering and marveling at Thunder Out of China. This is autobiography at its best by a man who has interviewed Mao, become friends with Jack Kennedy, Stilwell, and many more. He shows the financial picture of making a career in reporting,fiction, and books, writes with sympathy

and covers not only Asian WWII, but moves to the Marshall Plan, seeds of the common market, has a painful personal experience with th6 e indignities of McCarthy era, and stops halfway through his career which ends with a stroke in 1986. He has opinions often proven right. He writes very well. A two days read for me.I strongly recommend it.

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LibraryThing member grvaughan

This book has been a delight, with fascinations on nearly every page. His account of China during WW2, Paris and postwar Germany during the Marshall Plan, and New York's rapid changes in the 1950s were all illuminating in countless ways.

White seemed to have a gift for being at just the right place

at just the right time, from showing up in Chongqing just before the first large-scale aerial bombing campaign in history, to visiting Mao just as the CCP convened for its first gathering in years, to hobnobbing with Eisenhower in Europe as he mulled running for president, and even traveling the campaign trail with JFK in 1960.

Much of it might be lost on a college student, but if you've read history long enough to have a substantial scaffolding on which to hang various facts, as they say, it's a worthwhile read.

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