Root, Waverley

Waverley L. Root (1903–1982) was a newspaperman, foreign correspondent, author, and radio commentator—and an authority on food. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. He attended Tufts College (now Tufts University) and worked for the Associated Press during his college years. He left college after three years and never got his degree. Root moved to Greenwich Village in New York, and from there he traveled to Paris in 1927. While in France he began working as a reporter for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. When the newspaper folded in 1938, Root worked for United Press, Time, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and The Chicago Times. He returned to the United States just after the outbreak of World War II. In 1957 Waverley Root returned to Paris as a correspondent for the Washington Post, a position he held until his retirement in 1969.