White jump-started his career as a China correspondent for TIME. Forty years later the magazine anointed him “the godfather of modern political reportage.” White penned four Making of the Presidentvolumes, but it was his first, which traced the clash between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, that stands out as his finest. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize a year after its 1961 debut, the book takes readers into the contenders’ living rooms and hotel lobbies, lifts the curtain on the strategy confabs and critical primaries, and chronicles the creation of the candidates’ public persona as well as their private fears and foibles. White draws indelible portraits of both candidates and the grand pageantry of the presidential campaign. But the book’s star is the country they’re vying to lead, for which he has evident affection.