Mark White
Program Committee
Professor of History, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK
My Story
Professor Mark White is a scholar who works on twentieth-century United States history, with a focus on the modern American presidency. He has published nine books. A number of them examine the presidency of John F. Kennedy, including a body of work on the Cuban missile crisis. His 1996 book The Cuban Missile Crisis, described by one reviewer as ‘this generation’s definitive account of the famous crisis,’ provided new information and interpretations, such as how JFK planned a military strike at the start of the crisis, the role played by Adlai Stevenson, and the identity of the secret sources used by Senator Kenneth Keating in claiming before the crisis that there were nuclear weapons in Cuba.
The Financial Times described his 1999 edited collection of declassified documents on the missile crisis as ‘fascinating’ and ‘absorbing.’ When the tapes of the ExComm meetings were declassified and transcribed, the leading academic journal on American foreign policy, Diplomatic History, asked him to review this material, one of the most important releases of documentation on US foreign affairs in recent decades. In 2012 he was asked to deliver the prestigious Harry Allen Memorial Lecture, on the fiftieth anniversary of the crisis, and used the occasion to present a new interpretation of the role played by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
He has written other works on JFK, including an edited book Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisited, with contributions by such leading Kennedy scholars as James Giglio and Fredrik Logevall, which made the case for a more balanced, nuanced assessment of Kennedy than that provided by the Camelot or revisionist schools.
His scholarship on JFK has been part of a broader assessment of the modern American presidency. He has also published on the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.
His most recent book is Icon, Libertine, Leader: The Life and Presidency of John F. Kennedy (2024).