Theodore Draper
American journalist and political writer (1912-2006)
Theodore H. Draper (September 11, 1912 – February 21, 2006) was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran–Contra affair. Draper was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 1990 recipient of the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians from the American Historical Association.
Biography
Early years
Theodore Draper was born Theodore Dubinsky in Brooklyn, New York on September 11, 1912, one of four children. His younger brother was Hal Draper, who became a noted Marxist historian. Theodore's parents were ethnic Jews who emigrated to New York City from Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Samuel Dubinsky, was the manager of a shirt factory who died in 1924. His mother, Annie Kornblatt Dubinsky, ran a candy store to make ends meet following her husband's death.
He was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from the borough's Boys High School. His mother insisted they change the family name to the "American-sounding" surname "Draper" when Draper was 20 so that the children could avoid antisemitism during pursuit of their careers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Theodore Draper” as american journalist and political writer (1912-2006). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american journalist and political writer (1912-2006). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7781760. VIAF identifies the subject as 22157203. The Library of Congress control number is n50026258. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 2006, 1990 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Theodore Draper” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.