Theodore White
American political journalism in the mid-twentieth century developed an appetite for narrative that moved beyond wire-service dispatch toward something closer to sustained, eyewitness chronicle. Theodore Harold White, born on May 6, 1915, in Dorchester, emerged from that moment as a journalist, novelist, historian, and writer whose work was conducted entirely in English.
White was educated at Hebrew College and later at Harvard University, and he went on to build a career that crossed the conventional boundaries separating daily journalism from historical inquiry and fiction. He applied the tools of each discipline to the others, treating his subjects with the cumulative attention of a historian while retaining the immediacy that journalism demands. His work as a novelist ran alongside his nonfiction output, giving him a range not common among writers whose reputations rest primarily on reportage or scholarship.
White received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the field's most closely watched recognition in that category, as well as the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. These two honors together span the space between literary craft and accountability journalism, suggesting the dual register in which his writing operated. He died in New York City; the exact date is recorded variously as May 9 or May 15, 1986, with the latter appearing in the most authoritative sources.
Quotes by Theodore White
If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free - however free one can be on this planet.
The job of intellectuals is to come up with ideas, and all we’ve been producing is footnotes.
Those 40 or 50 national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps – they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers.
I saw Chungking for the first time more than 40 years ago – a city of hills and mists, of grays and lavenders, two rivers shaping it to a point and the cliff rising above me like a challenge.
The best time to listen to a politician is when he’s on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he’s exhausted. Then he doesn’t lie.
There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it’s wonderful.
The President’s decisions make the weather, and if he is great enough, change the climate, too.
A liberal is a person who believes that water can be made to run uphill. A conservative is someone who believes everybody should pay for his water. I’m somewhere in between: I believe water should be free, but that water flows downhill.
With electricity we were wired into a new world, for electricity brought the radio, a “crystal set” and with enough ingenuity, one could tickle the crystal with a cat’s whisker and pick up anything.