Journalist and author Lance Morrow, "whose elegant essays, often with historical sweep, appeared for two decades on Time magazine's back page when it was a significant corner of American opinion journalism," died November 29, the New York Times reported. He was 85.
Morrow was a National Magazine Award finalist for his 1991 essay on evil, which he later adapted for the book Evil: An Investigation. His other books include The Chief: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (1985), Heart: A Memoir (1995), and The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson in 1948 (2005). His most recent book was the memoir The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism, which was published last year.
Hired by Time in 1965, Morrow initially wrote about celebrities, but soon began covering the riots in Detroit in 1967 and the Vietnam War. The Times noted that his many cover articles included seven "Man of the Year" (changed to "Person of the Year" in 1999) features. He started writing back-page essays in 1976 and continued until the mid-1990s.
"If I was the jazz piano player, he was the formal classicist," said Roger Rosenblatt, whose Time essays alternated weekly with Morrow's from 1980 to 1990. "He wrote wonderful essays that were not devoid of humor or passion yet were beautifully constructed."
In an editorial tribute, the Wall Street Journal noted: "Lance Morrow’s knowledge of American politics and society was vast, much of it based on his own experience and excellent memory. He contributed many pieces to our pages in recent years, each one written with his characteristic honesty and graceful style. America has lost one of its finest chroniclers."
"Being there is one of the imperatives of journalism," Morrow observed in The Noise of Typewriters. "Or it used to be, before the age of screens, which changed everything. Being there is still a good idea."