A Passing to Note

[Linda Anderson]

According to his obituary in the New York Times, Mr. Smith, "depicted the lives of presidents, prime ministers and generals in a series of popular biographies, among them the 1964 best seller 'When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson'... Recently, Mr. Smith wrote a brief obituary of himself, in third-person singular. It says, 'He used to muse that if there was an afterlife — granted a long shot, he said — he’d love it for the opportunities offered to interview people he studied in life.'”