Journalist/author Richard Ben Cramer, 62, dead of lung cancer

BY WILL BUNCH, Daily News Staff Writer bunchw@phillynews.com, 215-854-2957

Posted: January 08, 2013

RICHARD BEN CRAMER, an iconic journalist and author who won a Pulitzer Prize at the Inquirer for his vivid overseas reporting, died Monday evening in Baltimore after a battle with lung cancer. He was 62.

Cramer, who'd been living on Maryland's Eastern Shore and had been working on a book about New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez in recent years, died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, according to his close friend James McBride. Cramer's death was confirmed by family members to other news organizations late Monday.

"He was one of the greatest nonfiction writers to sit behind a desk and put a pen to a page," said McBride, author of the best-selling The Color of Water. "He's the writer that we all wanted to be ... He could spin a yarn out of anything."

In the post-Watergate era of journalism, Cramer was considered a giant, a writer's writer who injected life into uninspiring presidential candidates like Bob Dole and Joe Biden in his 1988 campaign epic, What It Takes, routinely listed as one of the best political tomes of all time.

A native of Rochester, N.Y., and a graduate of Johns Hopkins and Columbia Journalism School, Cramer worked at the Inquirer in the late 1970s and early '80s. He won the Pulitzer in 1979.

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