Robert John Donovan (August 21, 1912 ? August 8, 2003) was a Washington correspondent , author and presidential historian. ^[1] He died from complications from stroke. ^[2]

Biography [ edit ]

Donovan attended Lafayette High School in Buffalo, New York , where he was Captain of the Hocke Herald Tribune after the war and served as a foreign correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief. During the latter period he was President of the White House Correspondents' Association . From the Tribune, he moved to the Los Angeles Times as Washington Bureau Chief and for a short time as Associate Editor in Los Angeles.

Donovan began writing books on the Washington political scene while still a reporter and continued that after retirement. He also served a year as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a year as a Visiting Professor at Princeton University . He liked to joke that he was the only Professor at Princeton never to have attended a single day of college in his life. On the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Congress, he addressed a Joint Session of Congress as Truman's principal biographer. At the time, he was the only active journalist to have ever had that distinction.

His titles include The Assassins (1955), Eisenhower : The Inside Story (1956), PT-109 : John F. Kennedy in World War II (1961), The Future of the Republican Party (1976), Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman , 1945-48 (1977), Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-53 (1982), Nemesis: Truman and Johnson in the Coils of War in Asia (1984), The Second Victory: The Marshall Plan and the Postwar Revival of Europe (1987), Confidential Secretary: Ann Whitman's Twenty Years with Eisenhower and Rockefeller (1988), Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991 (1992, with Ray Scherer), and Boxing the Kangaroo: A Reporter's Memoir (2000).

References [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

• Donovan's Manuscripts of Eisenhower: The Inside Story , Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Interview with Donovan and Ray Scherer on Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Life , Booknotes , August 9, 1992
• Robert J. Donovan at IMDb