BOSTON (AP) β James MacGregor Burns, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian known for his expertise on leadership, has died at the age of 95.
His longtime companion, Susan Dunn, says that Burns died Tuesday at his home in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Burns won the Pulitzer Prize for a biography of Franklin Roosevelt and also wrote a highly influential book on leadership.
He helped coin two expressions now common in politics: “transformational” leaders, those with a vision to change the world, and “transactional” leaders, those with the cunning to get things done. The words were used constantly during the 2008 presidential race, with the “transactional” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton battling the “transformational” Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.
Dunn says Burns will be buried at Williams College, where he was a professor emeritus.
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Italie reported from New York.
