The best way to view the 2024 presidential election and to understand the dramatic transformation of American political history may be to pick up a copy of Theodore H. White’s “The Making of the President 1960,” now almost two-thirds of a century old.
The book remains a reliable guide to presidential politics — about how the process works and about how it has changed. It was praised, and then pilloried, for its concentration on the inside workings of presidential politics — what the candidates ate, how they traveled, who shaped their views, why they chose to campaign in one city and not in another.
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