Born on May 5, 1915, in Jersey City, New Jersey, Rovere graduated from Bard College (then a branch of Columbia University), Annandale, New York, in 1937. While an undergraduate, he was editor of The Bardian and worked with the trade unions in nearby Poughkeepsie and Hudson. Rovere wrote for several publications after graduation, some of them “pulps.” In 1938, however, he became associate editor of The New Masses, writing articles, editorials, and book reviews. Rovere remained there until August 1939, when announcement of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact forced him to resign in protest. He subsequently joined with much of American liberal opinion in opposing the Communist Party. After leaving The New Masses, Rovere contributed to several periodicals, making plain his disenchantment with the Party. Early in 1940 he traveled to South Carolina and Georgia to investigate the Ku Klux Klan on behalf of the Workers' Defense League. His articles on the Klan's anti-labor activities appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward, The Nation, and the labor press. Later in the same year, Rovere became an assistant editor of The Nation; in 1943 he moved to Common Sense as an editor.
While editing The Nation and Common Sense, Rovere also wrote for other periodicals. His article in Harper's, “Dewey: The Man in the Blue Serge Suit,” 1944, brought Rovere an invitation to become a staff member of The New Yorker. At first he wrote “Profiles,” book reviews, and other features; in 1948 he began “Letter from Washington,” which remained his primary assignment. While serving as a staff member of The New Yorker, Rovere contributed to other magazines (e.g., The New Republic, Harper's, Esquire, The Progressive, and Encounter), wrote for the Spadea Syndicate Inc., 1953-1954; and served as the U.S. correspondent for the (London) Spectator, 1954-1962. Through these writings, Rovere made an important contribution, notably during the McCarthy era and the Vietnam War, to public understanding of contemporary events. Except for Howe and Hummel: Their True and Scandalous History (1947), about two unscrupulous New York lawyers of the late nineteenth century, and Arrivals and Departures: A Journalist's Memoir (1976), his books, for the most part, dealt with contemporary events: The General and the President, with Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1951 (reissued as The MacArthur Controversy, 1965); Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years, 1956; Senator Joe McCarthy, 1959; The American Establishment and Other Reports, Opinions, and Speculations, 1962; The Goldwater Caper, 1965; and Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, 1968. Five of these books consist primarily of material which first appeared in The New Yorker and other periodicals.
Rovere was a Chubb Fellow at Yale University, 1951; served on the board of editors of the American Scholar, 1958-1967; lectured as a Fellow at Ezra Stiles College, Yale University, 1972-1973; and was a visiting professor of English at Vassar College, 1975-1976. From 1969 he served as chairman of the editorial advisory board of The Washington Monthly. Rovere was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was married in December 1941, to Eleanor Burgess; they had three children. Rovere died on November 24, 1979.
Much of the above information was supplied by Rovere's Arrivals and Departures: A Journalist's Memoir (New York: MacMillan, 1976).
