Reuters North American News Service, November 26th, 2007
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Public Library
has acquired the papers of historian Arthur Schlesinger, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and confidant to President
John Kennedy who died in March at 89.
The library announced Monday it had bought some 250
boxes, or nearly 300 linear feet in library parlance, from
Schlesinger's estate for an undisclosed amount, safeguarding
his journals and correspondence with world leaders for use by
researchers and historians.
The price has been kept confidential, a library spokeswoman
said.
The collection includes manuscripts, research files, phone
logs, sound recordings, videos, date books and clippings from
the mid-1930s to 1998, documenting monumental events from a man
with a front-row seat to history.
There is correspondence with Kofi Annan, Truman Capote,
Bill Clinton, Marlene Dietrich, Allen Ginsberg and Norman
Mailer, among other leading figures of politics, high society,
entertainment and literature.
Schlesinger won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award
twice each for his work on U.S. Presidents Kennedy and Andrew
Jackson. He also wrote a three-volume history on President
Franklin Roosevelt and a biography of Kennedy's brother, Robert
Kennedy.
After leaving the White House, Schlesinger wrote 19 books
and hundreds of articles, essays, and reviews with superb
access to influential people.
"The Arthur Schlesinger papers provide rich new resources
for researching our country's politics in an era of dramatic
change and civil unrest. In their remarkable depth they form a
new foundation of our collections documenting mid and late 20th
Century U.S. history," David Ferriero, director of The New York
Public Libraries, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, editing by David Wiessler)
