Born on a farm near La Cygne, Kansas, in the horse-and-buggy age of the 1890s, he died in an airplane crash in the far-off Marshall Islands of the South Pacific. In the eventful fifty-one years that ended in 1944, Raymond Clapper served as one of America's most perceptive and widely read interpreters of politics and national affairs. In honor of that achievement, the Raymond Clapper Memorial Association presents an annual award to the national capital press correspondent whose writings in the previous year best embody the ideals of "fair and painstaking reporting and sound craftsmanship that marked Mr. Clapper's work, and have contributed most to public enlightenment and a sound democracy."

One of the few books that Clapper was able to complete before he became a battle casualty in World War II was an explanation of political corruption in the nation's capital. Racketeering in Washington (1933) reveals Clapper's outrage at...