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Prize-winning US historian Schlesinger dies at 89

Arthur Schlesinger, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian and confidant to slain president John F. Kennedy, died of a heart attack late on Wednesday, his friends said Thursday. He was 89.

An unabashed liberal, Schlesinger won both the prestigious Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award in 1966 for his book A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, based largely on his own notes as a Kennedy insider.

Schlesinger later wrote Robert Kennedy and His Times, on the president's slain brother in 1978. A close friend of the family, he worked on the presidential campaigns of both Kennedys.

"Arthur was a trusted friend and loyal advisor to President Kennedy and a wonderful friend to me and to all of us in the Kennedy family," Senator Edward Kennedy, the youngest brother of John F. and Robert Kennedy, said in a statement. "I will miss him terribly, but his contributions to this country will live on. Arthur's love for this country was evident in every word he wrote and because of him, generations to come will have an invaluable understanding of American history."

"His life captured the spirit and wonderment of an age when possibilities seemed endless," he added.

Schlesinger won an earlier Pulitzer prize in 1946 for his account of President Andrew Jackson's 19th century government. He also wrote about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration.

"He never stopped writing, he never stopped participating in public affairs," Schlesinger's son Stephen told reporters, CBS News reported.

His last book was the 2004 War and the American Presidency, in which he criticized President George W. Bush's foreign policy and blasted the Iraq invasion as "a ghastly mess."
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