US historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Schlesinger Jr. died of a heart attack in Manhattan on Wednesday night, the New York Times reported on Thursday. He was 89. The paper quoted Schlesinger's son, Stephen, as saying he died in a hospital after being stricken in a restaurant while dining out with his family.
Schlesinger, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, was an insider of the Kennedy White House and an acclaimed social historian who examined the legacies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy. He chronicled the Kennedy Administration in "A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House," for which he won both the Pulitzer and a National Book Award in 1966.
In his more than 20 books, Schlesinger explored American culture and politics, and helped define US liberalism during the Cold War. He graduated from high school at age 15 and after a trip around the world with his family, went on to Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude in 1938, the paper said. Schlesinger had six children, four from his first marriage, to author Marian Cannon, and two from his second, to Alexandra Emmet.
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