I'm re-reading Theodore H. White's In Search Of History: A Personal Adventure. For those who don't recall, he was the author of the The Making Of A President... series, and this memoir was the result of an intellectual crisis in his life, which he explains well in his preface. Briefly, he was trying to cover the 1976 Presidential election as he had previous campaigns since 1960, but the magic was gone for him. He did not grow with the times, imo, and did not understand the new influence of the media on politics, and the affect the counterculture had on it. And so, he turned backwards into his own life for his next book.
I read the book once before, when I first got it, but it was a long time ago, as the dates above suggest, and I'm re-reading it now because I've just finished David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America And The Korean War, and realized how little I know of this crucial turning point in American history, when the USA was thrust unwillingly into the role of a "superpower". White was a reporter on the scene in Asia during much of this transition, and later in Europe, and his firsthand observations of the players in the drama cannot but help to add to this gap in my knowledge.
