Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Burns
BOSTON -- James MacGregor Burns, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and political scientist who analyzed the nature of presidential leadership and wrote candid biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, died Tuesday at 95.
Burns died at his home in Williamstown, Mass., his companion and fellow historian Susan Dunn said.
The longtime Williams College professor helped coin two adjectives now common in politics: "transformational" leaders, or those with a vision to change the world, and "transactional" leaders, those with the cunning to get things done.
Burns was a liberal Democrat who wrote about and participated in the political process. He was a convention delegate, congressional aide and congressional candidate who in the late 1950s became friendly enough with Sen. John F. Kennedy to be granted access for a 1960 biography that angered the family by portraying Kennedy as a man of excessive calculation and questionable heart.
His two-volume biography of Roosevelt was praised by historians as a model of accessible, objective scholarship. The second volume, Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom, was published in 1970 and won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.
Burns' other books included Leadership, a 1978 release that outlined his "transformational" and "transactional" theories and became standard reading among students of business and politics; a biography of George Washington written with Dunn; and a trilogy on U.S. history, The American Experiment.
In his late 80s, he wrote a well-reviewed history of the Supreme Court, Packing the Court, and at age 95 he completed a book, Fire and Light, on the Enlightenment intellectual movement.
Convicted racketeer, reputed mob boss
The Associated Press
GROSSE POINTE PARK, Mich. -- Reputed Detroit mob boss Jack Tocco, who was convicted of racketeering in 1998 in a federal crackdown on organized crime, has died. He was 87.
Tocco, who said he fought his entire life to clear his name, died Monday at home in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Park, according to Bagnasco & Calcaterra Funeral Home, which is handling arrangements. A cause of death wasn't released.
Tocco, whose family had a linen business, grew up in suburban Detroit and repeatedly proclaimed his innocence. He was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to commit extortion in 1998. He served nearly three years behind bars in the case and paid $950,000 to the government.
Attorney James Bellanca Jr., whose firm represented Tocco, said he learned of Tocco's death from his family. In an email, he said Tocco lived his life "under the scrutiny of the government and the subject of public accusation."
A federal jury in 1998 convicted Tocco of taking part in a 30-year racketeering conspiracy that included loan-sharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice and attempts to gain hidden interests in Nevada casinos. The FBI labeled him the Detroit crime family's boss in an organizational chart released in 1990.
Tocco initially was sentenced to one year and a day, but that sentence was later invalidated by the appeals court after the government argued that the penalty was too lenient. In 2000, a federal judge in Detroit imposed a new sentence of 34 months.
Metro on 07/17/2014