Theodore Harold White (1915–1986) was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, best known for his acclaimed accounts of the 1960 and 1964 presidential elections.

Born May 6, 1915, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of a Jewish lawyer, White received a scholarship to Harvard in 1934, based upon his academic achievements at the famous Boston Latin high school, which he graduated from in 1932.

White graduated from Harvard in 1938, with a degree in Chinese history, and the following year, became one of Time magazine's first foreign correspondents, being stationed in East Asia from 1939 to 1945. He then served as European correspondent for the Overseas News Agency (1948–50) and for The Reporter (1950–53).

With experience in analysing foreign cultures from his time abroad, White took up up the challenge of analysing American culture with the books The Making of the President, 1960 (1961) and The Making of the President, 1964 (1965), both looking at American elections. They recieved a great deal of critical acclaim, and the first book won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. He later went on to analyze the elections of 1968 and 1972 in later books.

White's exclusive interview with Jacqueline Kennedy, after her husband's death, in which White compared the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy with the legend of Camelot, was also acclaimed.

White was the coauthor (with Annalee Jacoby) of Thunder Out of China (1946) and also wrote Fire in the Ashes (1953), The Mountain Road (1958), Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (1975), the autobiographical In Search of History: A Personal Adventure (1978), and America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, 1956–1980 (1982). He died on May 15, 1986, in New York City, New York.

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• Theodore H. White