"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." -- Ronald Steel
Ronald Lewis Steel (born March 25, 1931) is an award-winning American writer, historian, and professor. He is the author of the definitive biography of Walter Lippman.
"Discount air fares, a car in every parking space and the interstate highway system have made every place accessible - and every place alike.""He has not yet become an elder statesman, though his foreign policy credentials are considerable, but he is certainly our ancient mariner, forever tugging at our sleeve to let him tell his tale of what really happened.""Politics as battle has given way to politics as spectacle.""Television has made places look alike, and it has transformed the way we see. A whole generation of Americans, maybe two, has grown up looking at the world through a lens."
Ronald Steel was born in 1931 in Morris, Illinois outside of Chicago. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and English from Northwestern University (1953) and a Master of Arts degree in political economy from Harvard University (1955).
He served in the United States Army and was a diplomat in the United States Foreign Service.
He is the author of Walter Lippmann and the American Century, the definitive biography of Lippman. For this book, he was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1980, as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History.
He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1973.
Steel is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations, History, and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Prior to teaching at USC, he taught at Yale University, Rutgers University, Wellesley College, Dartmouth College, George Washington University, UCLA, and Princeton University.
Steel wrote for The New Republic in the 1980s. He has also written for the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times and the The New York Review of Books.