Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/historian-arthur-schlesinger-jr-passes-at-age-89 Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Pulitzer prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died at 89, authored texts on American democracy and the presidency. The NewsHour reports on his life and his influence. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. MARGARET WARNER: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was one of this country's most prominent historians, a proud liberal, prolific author, and one-time presidential adviser.Born in Ohio, the son of an historian, Schlesinger graduated from Harvard and spent a stint during World War II at the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA.In 1945, his groundbreaking best-seller about Andrew Jackson's presidency, "The Age of Jackson," won the 27-year-old a Pulitzer Prize. In 1946, Schlesinger helped found the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action.His 1949 book, "The Vital Center," advocated a marriage of liberalism at home with anti-communist policies abroad. The 1950s saw Schlesinger continue combining scholarship with activism, teaching at Harvard, embarking on his multi-volume series, "The Age of Roosevelt," and advising the ill-starred presidential campaigns of Democrat Adlai Stevenson.In 1961, he was tapped to join John F. Kennedy's White House staff as a special adviser, becoming a trusted confidante of the family and unofficial court philosopher. His 1965 memoir of those years, "A Thousand Days," won both the Pulitzer and National Book Awards.During the Nixon years, Schlesinger's 1973 book, "The Imperial Presidency," warned of the dangers of unbridled executive power and coined a phrase still widely used today.In 1979, his biography "Robert Kennedy and His Times" won him his second National Book Award.Over all these years, Schlesinger also kept up a fierce schedule, writing on issues of the day for publications as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair. And he was sought out to comment on these issues on television, including on the NewsHour. This clip is from the late 1980s. ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR., Historian: A realistic president recognizes that he is president within the Constitution and that the Constitution provides the framework in which he can exert considerable power.But the power depends on persuasion, and it depends on consent. And our great presidents have, on the whole, exerted that power within the Constitution. MARGARET WARNER: Schlesinger had been in ill health of late. But last December, he sat for a Vanity Fair photo shoot in his New York apartment, with surviving members of the Kennedy administration, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.Schlesinger suffered a heart attack at a restaurant in New York City last night. He was 89 years old.