Donovan began writing books on the Washington political scene while still a reporter and continued that after retirement. He also served a year as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a year as a visiting professor at Princeton University. He liked to joke that he was the only professor at Princeton never to have attended a single day of college in his life. In 1984, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Harry S. Truman, Donovan addressed a Joint Session of Congress as Truman's principal biographer.[2] At the time, he was the only active journalist to have ever had that distinction.
Donovan's works include The Assassins (1955), Eisenhower: The Inside Story (1956), PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II (1961), Six Days in June. Israel's Fight for Survival (1967), The Future of the Republican Party (1976), Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-48 (1977), Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-53 (1982), Nemesis: Truman and Johnson in the Coils of War in Asia (1984), The Second Victory: The Marshall Plan and the Postwar Revival of Europe (1987), Confidential Secretary: Ann Whitman's Twenty Years with Eisenhower and Rockefeller (1988), Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991 (1992, with Ray Scherer), and Boxing the Kangaroo: A Reporter's Memoir (2000).
Donovan died in 2003 from complications from a stroke.[3]
