Astor, Gerald 1926-2007 (Gerald Morton Astor)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 3, 1926, in New Haven, CT; died December 30, 2007, in Scarsdale, NY. Journalist, historian, biographer, editor, and author. Astor began his career as a journalist after World War II and spent decades in magazine journalism, but his wartime experiences stayed with him and inspired several of the thirty-plus books that he published over a twenty-five-year period. Many of those books were written with direct input from other eyewitnesses to war, and others emerged from correspondence and journal entries. Astor was commended for his ability to evoke the sights and sounds of the battlefield as they were experienced by the soldiers on the ground. He wrote about the directors of war as well, paying attention to both sides, as evidenced in his biographies Terrible Terry Allen: Combat General of World War II—The Life of an American Soldier (2003) and The "Last" Nazi: The Life and Times of Dr. Joseph Mengele (1985). Astor also wrote about sports and athletes. He spent nearly ten years as a picture editor for Sports Illustrated in the 1950s before moving to Look magazine as a senior editor in 1963. One of his first books was a biography of boxer Joe Louis; he also wrote a few books about baseball and one about golf. Astor once told CA that his work often focused on "crime and medicine" which, like war and even sports on occasion, can "can involve life and death situations." He always returned, however, to the life-and-death experiences of the battlefield. Astor's wide-ranging books include The Disease Detective: Deadly Medical Mysteries and the People Who Solve Them (1983), The Great American Pastime: Baseball through the Hall of Fame (1988), and Presidents at War, from Truman to Bush: The Gathering of Military Power to Our Commanders in Chief (2006).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, January 4, 2008, p. A21.