William H. Goetzmann, 80, who won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1967 for his book “Exploration and Empire,” which looked at journeys exploring the American West in the 19th century, has died.
Goetzmann, a University of Texas at Austin professor, died Sept. 7 from congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, said his son, William N. Goetzmann, on Friday.
The elder Goetzmann taught at UT-Austin for more than 40 years before retiring in 2005.
“Exploration and Empire” also won the Francis Parkman Prize in 1967, an award given by the Society of American Historians for the best nonfiction book on America.
In a 1966 review of “Exploration and Empire” in The New York Times, David Lavender said that by explaining the exploration of the American West as a systematic process, Goetzmann “has achieved a feat of historical discovery as notable in its own way as were some of the physical excursions into the West that he describes so well.”
Dodge Morgan, 78, the first American to complete a solo sail around the globe without stopping, has died of cancer.
Morgan reportedly died Tuesday at a Boston hospital.
He was a journalist and entrepreneur best known for sailing nonstop around the world in 150 days in his 60-foot American Promise in 1985 and 1986. He beat the record time held by British sailor Chay Blyth. Morgan, a Massachusetts native, spent much of his later life on Snow Island in Harpswell, Maine, and never lost his love of sailing.
He owned the Maine Times, an alternative weekly newspaper that he bought in 1985 and sold in 1997, and the Casco Bay Weekly, which ceased operations in 2002.
The Associated Press
