Just out of Harvard and still trying to master the intricacies of Mandarin, Theodore H. White made his way to China and found a land in turmoil. Settling in Chiang Kai-shek's wartime capital of Chongqing (Chungking), then a drowsy Yangtze River port with a population of 250,000, he soon began reporting from there for TIME. One book (Thunder Out of China, 1946), two wars (China against Japan, China against itself) and six eventful years later, he departed, in sharp disagreement with TIME'S Editor-in-Chief, Henry R. Luce, about China's future.
In the decades since, he has chronicled some of the major events of our time, from Europe's postwar recovery (Fire in the Ashes, 1953) to America's shifting politics (The Making of the President series, 1960 to 1980). This spring, Pulitzer Prizewinner White returned to China for his first extended visit since the mid-1940s (in 1972 he covered Richard Nixon's brief trip).