Obituaries

Ricky Jay, 1946-2018.

Todd H. Bol, 1956-2018.

Walter Laqueur, 1921-2018.

Anyone inclined to believe that social media have hardened our public discourse will have found ample evidence last week, when John McCain died.

Robin Leach, 1941-2018.

The death of Sir Vidia Naipaul on August 11 will generate plenty of retrospective monographs and essays, most of them rightly laudatory, some of them less so. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, the descendant of Indian immigrants. In his teens he won a government scholarship to study abroad, and he…

Kofi Annan, 1938-2018.

Lord Carrington, 1919-2018.

We were saddened this week to learn of the death of Donald Hall, one of the great formalist poets to arise in the second half of the 20th century. Hall wrote scores of works. He was a talented playwright, a superb memoirist, and an omnicompetent anthologist.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes and host Charlie Sykes remember the legacy of Dr. Charles Krauthammer.

Being a big tipper takes more than mere money.

Any assessment of Anthony Bourdain’s life, his suicide notwithstanding, is likely to be tinged with jealousy. We suppose someone had to get paid to be a world traveler and bon vivant, but did Bourdain have to be so good at it? At a minimum, few people have a constitution that can alternately…

John Julius Norwich, 1929-2018.

Bernard Lewis, 1916-2018.

Tom Wolfe was death on intellectual pretension, and he mocked those who always sought out the worst in America.

A touch of old Washington passed away March 30 with the death of 94-year-old Anna Chennault.

Whenever I need to check out of the world, I head to a place called Satan's Creek. I go there to catch-and-release—or maybe catch-and-ogle—God's most perfect creatures: wild brook trout. They come small in these mountain runs. An 11-incher would be considered trophy-size. Still, bringing one to…

Much as the name Tiger Woods is familiar to people who do not follow golf, so the name Stephen Hawking will be familiar even to people who care little about physics. His death on March 14 provoked an outpouring of eulogies of the kind usually reserved for rock stars and former presidents. His…

The question of who deserves an obituary has long vexed editors at newspapers and magazines. Should they limit themselves to the most well-known public figures or dig deep into the less well-known but often fascinating lives of the hoi polloi? Do you cover the lives of the notoriously awful as well…

When I first encountered Jeff Bell, he was debating Bill Bradley, the Democratic candidate for Senate from New Jersey. Bell was the Republican candidate and the underdog to Bradley, a famous basketball star at Princeton and later for the New York Knicks. It was 1978.

Ursula K. Le Guin, who died on January 22 at the age of 88, lived most of her adult life in Portland, Oregon, where she and her husband Charles—who taught French at the local university—quietly brought up their three children. I suspect that Le Guin, who herself majored in French at Radcliffe, must…

Five nights a week, Sunday through Thursday, from 1973 to 2012, Milton Rosenberg elevated AM radio and the cultural tone generally in Chicago. Milt Rosenberg died on January 9 at the age of 92. His two-hour talk show was nothing if not anomalous. A University of Chicago professor, his academic…

Roy Halladay, one of two pitchers in Major League Baseball history to toss a playoff no-hitter and a two-time Cy Young Award-winner, died in a plane crash Tuesday at age 40.

C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as the JFK assassination. It's an odd bit of historical trivia that often gets cited to show how even important markers can get lost amid earth shattering news. It might be as stretch to compare Tom Petty to those intellectual titans, but it…

Reactions to the death of 91-year-old Hugh Hefner this past week seem to waver between tributes to his pioneering role in the postwar Sexual Revolution–and horror at the consequences of his pioneering role in the Sexual Revolution. My own view of the aforementioned Revolution is that it would have…

I’ll remember Mike Cromartie as a fellow Christian and my friend. I met Mike in the early 1980s. We were roughly the same age and had some of the same interests—at the top of the list, politics and religion. Mike became a master of evangelical Christianity and its involvements in politics in his…

Glen Campbell’s passing left me sad, and not just because I enjoy his music. Campbell was the first celebrity I ever met: Not only was our encounter memorable but it struck me later as an amazingly instructive lesson for how a person should conduct oneself when faced with an awkward situation.

Peter Augustine Lawler was a humanities professor's humanities professor, a genial gadfly who could talk and write about contemporary politics and pop culture—he was a huge fan of director Whit Stillman and published articles such as "Disco and Democracy" and "Celebrity Studies Today"—as adroitly…

Many mistaken beliefs left over from the 1960s are embedded in mainstream, which is to say liberal, American culture. As an earnest young lefty I was taught that generals like war, that businessmen like free markets, that Christians think everyone else is going to hell, and that Republicans are…

Many mistaken beliefs left over from the 1960s are embedded in mainstream, which is to say liberal, American culture. As an earnest young lefty I was taught that generals like war, that businessmen like free markets, that Christians think everyone else is going to hell, and that Republicans are…

By now, there's a kind of collective Kubler-Ross process that we all go through with the deaths of beloved musicians, accompanied by varying degrees of grief and angst. The one-two gut punch of Prince and Bowie last year will be pretty hard to top. And now, Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell has…

Jean Stein, author and editor, took her own life earlier this week when she leapt from the balcony of her Upper East Side apartment. Friends described her as depressed. She was 83, and leaves behind her two daughters, Wendy vanden Heuvel, an actress and producer, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor…

Last May, I traveled to Rome with a small group of journalists. We met with bishops and cardinals. We toured the Scavi beneath St. Peter's and explored the Vatican Museums with a renowned art historian. We were welcomed onto the terrace atop the papal apartment, giving us an extraordinary view of…

I wanted to say something almost as soon as I heard that legendary National Review editor Kate O'Beirne had passed, and I regret it's taken a few days. When I heard the shocking news Sunday, I was already scrambling to get to another funeral out of state. It turns out that death is also what…

I highly recommend the lovely tributes to Kate O'Beirne, who died Sunday after a very private battle with cancer, from her colleagues at National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg.

Early morning on February 17, word was getting around that Michael Novak had passed away in his sleep, and email klatsches were forming. In mine, one of his close friends wrote that "the generosity of Michael's friendship allowed him to obscure the fact that he was among the few truly great men…

On March 14, 1976, a writer, academic, and Democratic party operative published a 1,200-word op-ed in the Washington Post called “A Closet Capitalist Confesses," and all hell broke loose. Nearly every intellectual journal in America felt compelled to opine about the absurd­ity of a modern…

Early morning on February 17, word was getting around that Michael Novak had passed away in his sleep, and email klatsches were forming. In mine, one of his close friends wrote that “the generosity of Michael's friendship allowed him to obscure the fact that he was among the few truly great men…

Bob Michel, the former Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, passed away February 17, a few days short of his 94th birthday.

I like to think of myself as a writer-editor on call. If a metaphor needs rewiring or a talking-point has lost its pointiness, I am on it like butter on toast. But when a friend asked me to write an obituary for her mother, I wondered if I was really the man for the job. I didn’t know her mother…

Nat Hentoff—columnist, music critic, jazz lover, civil libertarian, atheist, pro-life intellectual opposed to abortion and the death penalty—was prolific and productive up until the end of his life. He died last week of natural causes at the age of 91. He was so expansive in his interests and…

Nat Hentoff—columnist, music critic, jazz lover, civil libertarian, atheist, pro-life intellectual opposed to abortion and the death penalty—was prolific and productive up until the end of his life. He died last week of natural causes at the age of 91. He was so expansive in his interests and…

Craig Sager, the beloved NBA broadcast reporter who won over the most uncooperative of athletes and coaches with his geniality and garb, died Thursday after a nearly three-year fight against leukemia. He was 65.

World War II and Korean War pilot, Mercury Seven astronaut, and former United States Senator John Glenn died Thursday at an Ohio State University medical center in Columbus. He was 95 years old.

In 1953, a young Fidel Castro was tried for his armed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a dismal failure, though its date—July 26—was later taken as the name of Castro's revolutionary movement. At the trial 24…

In 1953, a young Fidel Castro was tried for his armed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a dismal failure, though its date—July 26—was later taken as the name of Castro's revolutionary movement. At the trial 24…

The creator of the McDonald's Big Mac, Jim Delligatti, died in his home outside Pittsburgh Monday at age 98. The former franchisee came up with the idea for the sandwich in the mid-1960s, and it's been a staple of fast food ever since.

Baby boomers had reason to feel slightly more decrepit than usual last week when it was learned that Robert Vaughn, the veteran character actor who played the debonair secret agent Napoleon Solo on the popular television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), had died at the age of 83.

Baby boomers had reason to feel slightly more decrepit than usual last week when it was learned that Robert Vaughn, the veteran character actor who played the debonair secret agent Napoleon Solo on the popular television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), had died at the age of 83.

Warren Hinckle III, who died last month in San Francisco, aged 77, was a man of the past. He enjoyed a brief period of national prominence during the late 1960s, when he edited Ramparts, the aggressively leftist monthly. But during the Hinckle ascendancy, his capers and capering—often overdressed…

Warren Hinckle III, who died last month in San Francisco, aged 77, was a man of the past. He enjoyed a brief period of national prominence during the late 1960s, when he edited Ramparts, the aggressively leftist monthly. But during the Hinckle ascendancy, his capers and capering—often overdressed…

Just as Americans are sometimes mystified by European enthusiasm for certain of our countrymen—Jerry Lewis/France, David Hasselhoff/Germany, etc.—the reverse can be true as well. Case in point: the immense popularity in America of the BBC television series Yes Minister (1980-84) and Yes, Prime…

It was easy to mock Alvin Toffler when he was riding high in the saddle, back in the 1970s. A self-described "futurist" (precise job description still TBD), he was part Jeremiah and part Arthur C. Clarke, warning us all about the dizzy pace of technological change even as he got giddy describing…

Pat Summitt, the women's college basketball coach who won more games than anyone to have led a program at the Division I level, died Tuesday at age 64.

There was always something wrong about saying Buddy Ryan coached defense. The units that he sent onto the field may not have been in possession of the football, but there was nothing defensive about them. They were the aggressors. They didn't stop offenses; they routed them. Destroyed them.…

Arguably the greatest scene in what many consider the best movie of all time belongs to French actress Madeleine LeBeau in Casablanca.

A loyal reader brought to our attention the death last week at age 103 of a western Michigan philanthropist, Ralph Hauenstein. Our scribe writes that Hauenstein was “a real American hero" and encouraged us to read about him, since "we have so few chances left to say thank you to this generation."