WHYTE'S

Months before he was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was asked by David Frost in a live television interview which historical character he admired most. The unexpected question left Kennedy scrambling.

“A...

The New Yorker published a positive and thorough review of Hoover today with an illustration by the wonderful Bendik Kaltenborn. It's a great caricature of President #31. Perfectly captures the jawline, the eyes, the intensity, and the aloofness of Hoover. Some nice de...

I've been reading John Kenneth Galbraith lately, the late great and now terribly unfashionable Canadian-American economist. No one seems to take his economics seriously anymore but he was a strong writer and he had a lot of interesting things to say on a lot of still r...

The most enjoyable part of any publishing project whether in newspapers, magazines or books is the arrival of the finished product. My first job was at the Sherwood Park News, a weekly newspaper. The bundles of papers were dropped off at the office on Sunday nights. Th...

I've long had a thing for Chicago, started when my father worked for International Harvester and went there for his most important business trips, and it has grown now that my daughter has settled in the city. I've become a Bears fan, and a regular browser of the Chica...

David Shribman, the Pulitzer-winning editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote this terrific piece on the struggles of Trump, the Republican Party, and Obamacare. He cites my forthcoming Hoover biography on the difficulties of faced by a businessman elected to the Pr...

It's been just over two years since Postmedia, Canada's largest newspaper company, paid $316 million for 175 newspapers and websites belonging to Sun Media, Canada's second-largest newspaper company.

The deal was hailed at the time as a necessary act of consolidation in...

I often get asked why I thought it was worth spending seven years on a biography of a failed president. Here's part of the answer. For those of you unacquainted with him, Herbert Hoover's life in a mid-size paragraph, from my preface:

"A contemporary once described...

Last week, Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write magazine (a Writer’s Union publication) resigned his position over an opinion article he wrote in an edition devoted to Indigenous writing. I read columns on this news by Elizabeth Renzetti in the Globe and Mail and Christie...

It’s been said that data is the oil of the 21st century. I’m sure by now we all know our data, not just what we get up to online but also anything that can be digitally tracked, is coveted by governments and businesses alike. The debate over who owns that data and how...