Autobiography of William Allen White

Autobiography of William Allen White

by William Allen White
Publisher: Macmillan
©1946, Item: 95272
Hardcover, 669 pages
Used Price: $8.00 (1 in stock) Condition Policy

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From the dust jacket:

This is the life story of one of our most beloved Americans, told as only he could tell it with his own warm, appealing personality shining through every page.

The life of William Allen White inevitably forms a chapter in American history, for he not only participated in the making of much of the history of his era, but was a keen observer of a great deal more. His book is an effective and mellow personal story of an outstanding figure and of a way of life, both of which typify an America now past.

The memories of boyhood and youth in a middle-class Kansas community during the seventies and eighties vividly show our country when the Middle West was still a frontier. There follow vignettes of small-town life. There are brilliant descriptions of local boss politics and of the party machine working hand in glove with the big industrial interests. There are able characterizations of leaders like Mark Hanna and Theodore Roosevelt, of lesser men like McKinley, of writers and editors, of the Progressives, of Harding, of the Versailles Peace Conference which Mr. White attended, and of America in the throes of its greatest period of growth and change. In the account of his mature years it is not his editorship that supplies the meat of the narrative so much as the description of the life he was leading and of the politics in which he played a continuous part. Thus the whole story offers, in effect, human footnotes to history.

Though Mr. White may not have liked the changes that he witnessed, he adapted himself to them. For him life was always good; he enjoyed it to the end, and his book is alive with that spirit.

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