He was America's jaunty celebrity historian. Schlesinger, a bow-tied liberal centrist, didn't just record history he helped make it. He published influential studies of crucial presidencies, notably Andrew Jackson's and Franklin D. Roosevelt's. And he wrote about John F. Kennedy from close range, as a White House "special assistant" who advised on policy. His notes from those years became the basis for A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won him the second of two Pulitzer Prizes.
His final year as Russia's President has been his most successful yet. At home, he secured his political future. Abroad, he expanded his outsizeif not always benigninfluence on global affairs