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Richard Ben Cramer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of “What it Takes,” a superbly detailed account of the 1988 presidential election considered among the finest books about American politics ever written, died in Baltimore Monday night. He was 62.

His daughter, Ruby, said he died of complications from lung cancer at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center.

Cramer was born in Rochester, N.Y. He studied at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He worked at The Baltimore Sun before joining The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1970s, where he was a Middle East correspondent from 1977 to 1984. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his reporting there.

He went on to write for Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and Esquire, where in 1986, he wrote an article, “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?,” about the iconic baseball player. The article, which seemed to strip Williams bare and reconstruct him anew in the eyes of his fans, became a hallmark of sports journalism.

“It was often said Ted would rather play ball in a lab, where fans couldn’t see,” Cramer wrote. “But he never blamed fans for watching him. His hate was for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t feel with him, his effort, his exultation, pride, rage, or sorrow.” But Cramer will be most remembered for “What it Takes,” a 1,000-page, vigorously researched tome that delved into the passions, idiosyncrasies, and flaws of George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, Michael S. Dukakis, Joe Biden, and others who fought for the presidency in 1988.

tzg wrote:I read the Ted Williams article before and agree about its quality. I will have to add that book to my "to read" list. Unfortunately, my usual method for getting to read books like that is that I look every once in a while on amazon.com to see if they're selling used copies for $0.01, and I don't think his book will get down there for a while.

RIP. He was truly an American icon.