He brokered celebrity divorces and recovered billions for victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. But he was proudest of helping to legalize interracial marriage.
His 1998 book, “Gotham,” which told the city’s story to 1898, focused on social and economic conflict. It won a Pulitzer Prize and inspired two sequels.
The billionaire widow of Laurence Tisch, she raised money for WNYC radio and other cultural organizations, along with Jewish, medical and educational institutions.
After defeating a Democratic fixture in a 1988 primary, he rose to lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee, then was toppled himself in 2020, undone by an overheard comment.
She accused Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, of recruiting her to join their predatory ring. She also sued Prince Andrew for sexual assault.
She was an adviser to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Mayor John V. Lindsay and Representative Bella S. Abzug before serving on the New York City Council from 1989 to 2001.
She and her husband, the financier B. Gerald Cantor, amassed one of the largest private collections of Rodin artworks, donating much of it to museums around the world.
At 11, she was one of the youngest at the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march in Selma, Ala., and was injured while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Considered an “author’s publisher” at Random House and then Penguin, she cultivated the careers of dozens of celebrated novelists and nonfiction writers.
His public radio show, “Bookworm,” was a literary salon of the air for 33 years, drawing guests like Joan Didion, Susan Sontag and David Foster Wallace.
