Masks in a Pageant was published by Macmillan in 1928. The book collects White’s political portraits — character studies of the presidents and major political figures he had known personally over thirty years of political journalism: McKinley, Hanna, Bryan, Roosevelt, Taft, La Follette, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and others.
White’s method is portraiture rather than analysis: he captures each figure through characteristic anecdote, physical description, conversational manner, and the telling detail that reveals character. His Theodore Roosevelt — enormous, energetic, intellectually voracious, morally certain — is one of the most vivid presidential portraits ever written. His Harding — handsome, vacant, genial, fatally weak — is devastating without being malicious. His Bryan — sincere, magnetic, intellectually shallow — is sympathetic enough to be convincing.
The book demonstrates White’s central gift: he knew these men personally, often intimately, and he could translate that personal knowledge into prose that makes the reader feel they know them too. This is political journalism at its highest level — the journalist as portraitist, combining the reporter’s eye for detail with the novelist’s gift for character.
Collecting Masks in a Pageant
First edition (Macmillan, New York, 1928): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $25–$60
- Very good: $10–$25