There is a curious relationship between a candidate and the reporters who cover him. It can be affected by small things like a competent press staff, enough seats, sandwiches and briefings and the ability to understand deadlines.

For this book he was awarded the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction a National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973. Steel wrote for The New Republic in the 1980s.

Ronald Lewis Steel (born March 25 1931) is an award-winning American writer historian and professor.