Stanley Weintraub

1929 - 2019

Stanley Weintraub April 17, 1929 ~ July 28, 2019 Stanley Weintraub, author or editor of more than fifty books in biography, culture history, and military history, died on July 28 in Jennersville, Pennsylvania. He was 90. Born "Male Baby Weintraub" to parents who could not decide between Stanley and Seymour in time for the birth certificate to be filed and who never bothered to legally change it once they'd made a decision, Weintraub liked to joke that, after fifty years as an author, he had truly earned Stanley as his "ballpoint pen name." Weintraub was a National Book Award finalist in 1967 for Beardsley, a 1968 Guggenheim Fellow, and his book Iron Tears (2005) was a finalist for the George Washington Prize for best book on the nation's founding era. As a lieutenant with the Eighth Army in Korea, working as the admissions officer for a prisoner of war hospital during the Korean War (1951-1953), he was awarded a Bronze Star and developed the material for his book War in the Wards. At the Pennsylvania State University, where he began as a teaching assistant and retired as Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities in 2000, he was Director of its Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies from 1970 to 1990. Throughout his writing and research career, his wife, Rodelle, was his most trusted editor and thought partner. In 1982, West Chester University established an archive of his books and manuscripts as the Rodelle and Stanley Weintraub Center for the Study of the Arts and Humanities. Toward the end of his career, Weintraub fell backwards into a string of Christmas-themed military histories, a development his children could never have predicted. Throughout the 1960s, Weintraub's children had begged their father for a Christmas Tree, like the Christian families in their neighborhood put up. Unsuccessful, they developed a new strategy: the children stuck an evergreen branch into an empty rubber cement bottle, appropriated from their father's office wastebasket, and hung matchboxes decorated as miniature facsimiles of his books amongst the sprigs. He was charmed, and a tradition began, and eventually his Christmas books ended up on what his children had long-ago dubbed the Stanley Tree. Notable among his books are Private Shaw and Public Shaw: A Duel Portrait of Lawrence of Arabia and G. B. S. (1963); Beardsley (1967); Journey to Heartbreak: The Crucible Years of Bernard Shaw (1971); The London Yankees: Portraits of American Writers and Artists in London, 1894-1914 (1979); Victoria: An Intimate Biography (1987); Long Day's Journey into War: Pearl Harbor and a World at War, December 7, 1941 (1991); Disraeli: A Biography (1993); The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July-August 1945 (1995); Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert (1997); Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (2001); General Washington's Christmas Farewell: A Mount Vernon Homecoming, December 1783 (2003); Iron Tears: America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire, 1775-1783 (2005); 11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 (2006); 15 Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall: Three Generals Who Saved the American Century (2007); General Sherman's Christmas: Savannah, 1864 (2009); Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941 (2011); A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival during the Korean War (2014). Weintraub edited Shaw Review, which became SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, from 1956 to 1989. He was also editor of Comparative Literature Studies from 1986 to 1993. As critic, he was a book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times Book Review, Washington Post and [London] Times Literary Supplement (TLS). He wrote often for MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Weintraub is survived by his wife of 65 years, Rodelle; by their three children, Mark (Judith) of Eugene, Oregon; David (Carie Lee) of Nashville, Tennessee; and Erica (Bruce) of Pullman, Washington; and by their eight grandchildren, MaryAlison, Sarah Beth, Sofia, Jimmy, Hannah, Isaac (Kelly), Benjamin, and Noah. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Weintraub Center for the Study of the Arts and Humanities, West Chester University Libraries, 25 West Rosedale Avenue, West Chester, PA 19383. A memorial will be held in Jennersville, PA, on Sunday, September 22. Notes may be sent via Schoenberg Memorial Chapel, 519 Philadelphia Pike, Wilmington, DE 19809.