Roundup of literary deaths: Spring 2019

We already discussed one of life's inevitabilities — taxes — so, sadly, it's fitting that we also tackle death.

Here are a few notable literary deaths from recent weeks:

Chris Albertson, best known for chronicling the life and creative work of Bessie Smith, died on April 24 at age eighty-seven.

Albertson was a writer, historian, broadcaster, and record producer who first put out a five-volume series of Smith’s recordings, then followed it up with a biography of her titled Bessie.

Read his obituary at Jazz Times.

Chuck Kinder, famous for both the work he created and appeared in, died May 3 at the age of seventy-six. Kinder wrote such novels as Snakehunter, The Silver Ghost, Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale, and Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-Earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life.

But he also inspired the character of Grady Tripp in the novel Wonder Boys, written by his former student, Michael Chabon.

You can read his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

Historian John Lukacs was both the most recent and eldest of this roundup, passing away May 6 at age ninety-five.

The topics of Lukacs’s thirty-plus works ranged from his native country (Hungary) to twentieth-century American history to the meaning of history itself.

One of his books on Winston Churchill — Five Days in London — became a bestseller after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani held up a copy and compared New Yorkers to Londoners, according to his Associated Press obituary.