Richard Ben Cramer

Political bard

Richard Ben Cramer reported like a demon and wrote like an angel, in torrents of prose that swept readers past the surface of subjects ranging from war to baseball and on to profound depths. As a Pulitzer Prize winner for the Philadelphia Inquirer in the late 1970s then as a freelance writer, Cramer, who died Jan. 7 at 62, was unsurpassed at the New Journalism, that blend of fact gathering and creative writing that can make reality read like art. His magnum opus, What It Takes, was a 1,000-page examination of six 1988 presidential candidates. No book better revealed the psychic...

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