Robert H. Ferrell, 97, a prolific scholar of diplomatic and presidential history who helped raise the historical perception of Harry S. Truman and published a bestselling collection of the president's letters to his wife, died Aug. 8 at a nursing center in Chelsea, Mich.
Ferrell, who taught for many years at Indiana University and was considered one of the country's leading historians, wrote more than 20 books and edited or collaborated on dozens of others.
He wrote a biography of George C. Marshall, the World War II general who later served as secretary of defense and secretary of state, and in 1959 published "American Diplomacy," an authoritative history.
He later wrote books on various aspects of the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he had a particular affinity for Truman, a fellow Midwesterner and piano player. He published 11 books about the 33rd president and was, historian Kai Bird wrote in the Washington Post in 1994, "probably as responsible as any academic for refurbishing Truman's reputation."
Truman became president in 1945 upon the death of Roosevelt — whose final year was chronicled in Ferrell's 1998 book "The Dying President." Late in 1951, amid the Korean War, Truman's approval rating stood at an abysmal 23 percent, and he was widely considered a crude failure as a president who allowed communism to sweep across Eastern Europe.
Ferrell was one of the first scholars to present a thorough reevaluation of Truman's achievements. He gave the president high marks for leading the country through the end of World War II, the integration of the armed forces and the creation of the CIA — and for having a folksy optimism that connected with people throughout the country. Ferrell wrote other books about Truman, including a 1994 biography that had the misfortune of coming out two years after David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography.
Robert Hugh Ferrell was born May 8, 1921, in Cleveland.
Lazy Lester, 85, a singer, harmonica player and guitarist from Louisiana whose country- and Cajun-tinged sound made him an architect of the style known as swamp blues, died Aug. 22 at his home in Paradise, Calif. The cause was cancer.
