Alan Brinkley, a leading historian of his time with a focus on 20th-century American political history, passed away Sunday night at his Manhattan home at the age of 70. According to his daughter, Elly Brinkley, the cause was complications from frontotemporal dementia, a neurological condition.

Brinkley’s scholarly work explored key events and figures of the last century, such as the Great Depression, World War II, and political leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. His 1983 book Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression earned the National Book Award. His widely used textbooks, American History and The Unfinished Nation, became best sellers and saw numerous updates over the years.

Georgetown University professor Michael Kazin noted that Brinkley’s scholarship significantly shaped how political historians approached the 20th century, especially the New Deal era.

Beyond his writing, Brinkley was deeply committed to education, earning teaching awards at Harvard and Columbia. He also taught at Oxford and Cambridge, a rare feat for an American historian.

Columbia historian Eric Foner highlighted in a tribute collection, Alan Brinkley: A Life in History (2019), that Brinkley’s work often focused on the complexities and challenges of American liberalism, its internal and external critics, and the interplay between popular movements and political institutions.

Born and raised in Washington, Alan was the son of longtime NBC News anchor David Brinkley. His brothers, Joel and John, also pursued careers in journalism. Though he initially considered law after graduating from Princeton, he abandoned the idea, partly due to his father’s strong dislike of the profession.

While he didn’t follow his family fully into journalism, Brinkley became a public intellectual — a historian who effectively communicated complex ideas to a general audience through the media. Nancy Weiss Malkiel, his senior thesis adviser at Princeton, recalled his exceptional writing talent even as a student, praising his sense of style, rhythm, and clarity — qualities not commonly found among young historians.