obituaries

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/29/2020
  

  The Long, Lonesome Roads of Jerry Jeff Walker

  Music writer Amanda Petrusich remembers the iconoclastic songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who died this week at 78. 

• 
• 10/17/2020
  

  Vaughn Davis Bornet, 1917-2020

  by Bornet Family

  Vaughn Davis Bornet, a frequent contributor to HNN, was writing history into his 103rd year. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/13/2020
  

  Edward C. Meyer, General who Revamped Post-Vietnam ‘Hollow Army,’ Dies at 91

  by 10/13/2020

  During a congressional hearing in 1980, Gen. Meyer used the memorable phrase “a hollow Army” to describe how the military branch had been beset by staffing problems, outdated equipment and general malaise after the Vietnam War.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/18/2020
  

  Stephen F. Cohen, Influential Historian of Russia, Dies at 81

  Stephen Cohen did not shy from controversy, either in his scholarly claims (made at the height of the Cold War) that the Bolshevik revolution contained true democratic potential before being corrupted, or in his criticisms of American efforts to influence post-Soviet Russia. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/20/2020
  

  Donald Kendall, Who Built Pepsico into a Soda and Snack-Food Giant, Dies at 99

  The late president of Pepsi-Cola was a leader in bringing American products to the Soviet bloc and Communist China during the cold war and was influential in pushing Richard Nixon to support the CIA's coup against democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende in Chile.

• 
• SOURCE: National Parks Traveler
  9/16/2020
  

  Ed Bearss, Past Chief Historian Of National Park Service, Dies At 97

  Ed Bearss was one of the most important figures in the preservation of Civil War battlefields as sites for the American public to learn about history.

• 
• SOURCE: Legal History Blog
  8/30/2020
  

  Anne Fleming: Business Historians Remember

  Anne Fleming is remembered as an outstanding scholar and generous colleague. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  8/24/2020
  

  The Passing of Pioneering Historian Moses Rischin Marks the End of an Era

  by Jonathan Sarna

  Moses Rischin, the last survivor among the bold group of scholars who created the field of American Jewish history following World War II, died last week in San Francisco at the age of 94. His passing marks the end of an era.

• 
• SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
  8/18/2020
  

  How Not to Read Bernard Bailyn

  by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

  Conservatives lionizing Bernard Bailyn for supporting libertarian interpretations of the nation's founding and valorizing the founders "aligns perfectly with the reactionary effort to cancel critically engaged understandings of the American past, but poorly with Bailyn’s own far more nuanced vision of historical practice."

• 
• SOURCE: Yale News
  8/18/2020
  

  Alan Trachtenberg, Pioneered New Ways of Understanding American Culture

  Trachtenberg is best known as one of the most distinguished and authoritative interpreters of what photographers have shown about history through the camera lens.

• 
• SOURCE: Stanford University
  8/10/2020
  

  Paul Seaver, Leading Historian of Early Modern England, Dies at 88

  Paul Seaver, a distinguished historian of early modern England and dedicated university citizen, died Aug. 1. He was 88.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/7/2020
  

  Eminent Scholar of Early U.S., Bernard Bailyn, Dies at 97

  An acknowledged landmark in scholarship, Bernard Bailyn's “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” won the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize in 1968. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/3/2020
  

  John Hume, Nobel Laureate for Work in Northern Ireland, Dies at 83

  "In the parlance of Northern Ireland, Mr. Hume was a “nationalist” whose dream of a reunited Ireland had no place for the violence embraced by “republicans” like the I.R.A., with its armed fighters and networks of financiers, bomb-makers and sympathizers in the region and in the United States."

• 
• SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
  8/3/2020
  

  Remembering Our Friend and Colleague, Professor David H. Bensman

  A champion for workers, Bensman mentored two generations of future labor activists, organizers, and scholars during a 42-year career at Rutgers.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/19/2020
  

  The Essential and Enduring Strength of John Lewis

  by Jelani Cobb

  "Lewis, like his peers Andrew Young, Marion Barry, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, transitioned into elected office as the post from which he would undertake this work. It was not an easy undertaking."

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  7/5/2020
  

  MIT Professor Tunney Lee, an Architect, Urban Planner, and Historian of Chinatown, Dies at 88

  An architecture professor who taught at MIT and the Chinese University of Hong Kong is remembered as a historian of Chinese American community and an advocate for including the public in the process of planning.

• 
• SOURCE: Florida State University News
  6/22/2020
  

  Legendary FSU History Professor Jim Jones Dies

  "Jim used to laugh that students would approach him to say that he’d taught their parents, to which Jim would reply, ‘and how’s your grandmother/grandfather, whom I also taught?’"

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  6/21/2020
  

  Prize-Winning Historian Robert D. Richardson, Who Wrote About American Thinkers, Dies At Age 86

  The biographer and intellectual historian was the winner of the Bancroft Prize in 2007 for William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism.

• 
• SOURCE: France 24
  6/21/2020
  

  Israeli Historian Zeev Sternhell, Advocate for Palestinian Rights, Dies at 85

  Hebrew University president Asher Cohen hailed Sternhell, a professor emeritus there who was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for political science in 2008, as "among the most important researchers" to emerge from the institution.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/21/2020
  

  Sally Banes, Distinguished Dance Critic and Historian, Dies at 69

  Her writing paired a vivid and inquisitive approach with a lack of agenda and a belief that dance was a crucial part of cultural history.