Dale Wasserman, a playwright born in Rhinelander, Wis., best known for writing the book for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha" and the stage version of Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," has died. He was 94.
Wasserman died last Sunday of congestive heart failure at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz.
From writing live TV dramas in the 1950s, Wasserman went on to write screenplays for several films, including "The Vikings" (1958), starring Kirk Douglas, and "Mister Buddwing" (1966), starring James Garner.
But it was as one of America's most-produced living playwrights, thanks largely to "Man of La Mancha," that he was best known over the past four decades.
The genesis of "Man of La Mancha" was Wasserman's "I, Don Quixote," a 90-minute 1959 television drama on "The Du Pont Show of the Month," starring Lee J. Cobb as both Cervantes and Don Quixote, and Eli Wallach as Sancho Panza.
Samuel Huntington, a political scientist best known for his views on the clash of civilizations, died Wednesday on Martha's Vineyard, Harvard University announced Saturday. He was 81.
Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007 after 58 years at Harvard. His research and teaching focused on American government, democratization, military politics, strategy and civil-military relations.
He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nations, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilizations.
