Richard Cramer Dies at 62

The New York Times reports that Richard Ben Cramer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of What It Takes, a superbly detailed account of the 1988 presidential election considered among the finest books about American politics ever written, died last night at 62.

Jonathan Martin: “It’s insufficient to say that Cramer’s 1,047-page tour de force on
the 1988 presidential race is the best book ever written about a
campaign. It is that. But what makes it so valuable, so rewarding, just
so much damn fun is that it illustrates why politics and journalism is
so much damn fun.”