“Not much would interfere with it.” He would work solid for two months, then travel briefly with his wife, and then “it was back to the grindstone,” she said.One of today’s premier biographers, Jean Edward Smith, has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “He was utterly dedicated to his writing,” his wife said. He joined the Marshall faculty after retiring from Toronto in 1999 and wrote many of his more notable books in West Virginia. Over the years he had been a visiting professor at Columbia, Princeton and Georgetown. He taught there for 35 years and became a Canadian citizen, holding dual citizenship.

Smith began his teaching career at Dartmouth, leaving in 1965 for the University of Toronto, which offered him tenure.

Johns Hopkins University Press plans to republish it later this year.ĭr. In an unusual move, Columbia accepted it as his dissertation. His first book, “The Defense of Berlin” (1963), which recounted the events leading to the building of the Berlin Wall, was published before he began his doctoral studies. Returning from Germany in 1961, he went on to receive his doctorate in public law and government from Columbia, in 1964. Smith is survived by a daughter, Sonja Bauer a son, Charles and four grandchildren. She was in law school and he was a young lieutenant on his way to becoming a captain. Stationed in Germany, he met his future wife there, Christine Zinsel.

at Princeton, and after graduating in 1954 he served in the Army for seven years. He attended McKinley Technology High School, graduating in 1950 and going on to Princeton, where he majored in political science and English. His mother, Eddyth (Carter) Smith, was a secretary in the Justice Department. Smith, was a barber at the Capitol on the House side. Madison he built the case for the American nation, and that’s one of the most important things in American history.” President Bill Clinton once said that “Jean Edward Smith’s biography of John Marshall showed me how as chief justice in Marbury v. “If you read books by other historians on the founding period, you see they all cite Smith when talking about Marshall.” “Before Smith wrote his biography, there was a dearth of material interpreting his life and his legacy in the modern day,” Patricia Proctor, director of the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy at Marshall University, said in an phone interview. His book on Marshall - “John Marshall: Definer of a Nation” (1996) - renewed interest in the longtime chief justice after decades of neglect.

FDR by Jean Edward Smith