Theodore H. White has become the poet laureate of American presidential campaigns. The occupational hazard of poets laureate, judging by the experience of royal courts, is a declining ratio of flattery to poetry. White's 1st book in this genre, The Making of the President: 1960, which I have just read for the 1st time, holds up amazingly well. It is written with unflagging narrative tension & is full of rewarding insights; I think it will last as a minor masterpiece of political reporting. Its successor, The Making of the President: 1964, is on a lower level. The wonder & zest of the 1st often decline into a schoolgirlish gushiness in the 2nd. The 1st is muscular, the 2nd mawkish.--I.F. Stone