From Cab Rides to the Cold War.

This article explores how Richard H. Rovere's "Letter from Washington" helped the New Yorker become a prominent voice on U.S. politics in the years following World War II. He combined the style of a literary critic with a detached approach to politics to create a style that distinguished the New Yorker's Washington reports from those of its competitors and helped shape the magazine's reputation as a powerful player in the postwar political culture. His consistent support of the anti-Communist foreign policy that was pursued by the Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower administrations reinforced the Cold War consensus in the early 1950s. This article draws on archival materials, including the Rovere and the New Yorker papers, as well as the political pieces that he contributed to the magazine between 1948 and 1954, when he established his reputation as a Washington correspondent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]