Robert John Donovan (August 21, 1912 – August 8, 2003) was an American
correspondent, author, and presidential historian.
Biography
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, D.C., 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
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' 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
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
. He liked to joke that he was the only professor at Princeton never to have attended a single day of college in his life. In 1984, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt that year. Subsequen ...
, Donovan 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.
Donovan's works include ''The Assassins'' (1955), ''Eisenhower: The Inside Story'' (1956), ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II'' (1961), ''Six Days in June. Israel's Fight for Survival'' (1967), ''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).
Donovan died in 2003 from complications from a stroke.
References
External links
Donovan's Manuscripts of ''Eisenhower: The Inside Story'' Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
*
Interview with Donovan and Ray Scherer on ''Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Life'' ''
Booknotes'', August 9, 1992
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donovan, Robert J
1912 births
2003 deaths
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
Lafayette High School (Buffalo, New York) alumni
20th-century American male writers