A best-selling author, historian and speechwriter for then-New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller has died. Joseph Persico was 84.
His wife, Sylvia Persico, says he died Saturday at a hospital in Albany after a long illness.
Persico published 12 books including biographies of Rockefeller, Colin Powell, Edward R. Murrow, CIA director William Casey and President Franklin Roosevelt. He was selected to write the words etched in granite at the National World War II Memorial: "Here we mark the price of freedom."
His book "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial" was made into a miniseries on Turner Network Television.
Persico was a Navy veteran. He lived in the Albany suburb Guilderland. He will have a private burial service at the National Cemetery in Schuylerville.
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