The making of the President, 1960 (1960)

Kennedy against Nixon, 1960 The starting point for everything else here. White followed the race from first primary to election night and wrote it up as one long story with characters, turning points and a cast of advisers, rather than a pile of dispatches. It won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, stayed on the bestseller list for more than 40 weeks and set off the whole tradition of campaign books. Its reverence for the presidency and for the people chasing it now reads as of its time, and later writers in this list were partly reacting against it. White covered 1964, 1968 and 1972 the same way, but this first volume is the one to start with.