Robert Mosbacher Sr., a Houston oil multimillionaire who served as U.S. Commerce secretary under his close friend, President George H.W. Bush, died Sunday at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 82.
The Texan was a powerful Republican fundraiser who served at the top echelons of Bush's presidential campaigns and most recently served as a general campaign chairman for the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain. As commerce secretary, Mosbacher helped lay the foundation for the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Laura Chapman Hruska, a founder and the editor in chief of Soho Press, an independent book publisher that specializes in literary fiction and exotic crime stories, died Jan. 9 of cancer at her home in New York City. She was 74.
Laura Hruska helped create Soho Press in 1986 with an eye toward gambling on serious novels by lesser known or unknown writers that other publishing houses shied away from.
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