Kenneth Silverman, a specialist in Colonial American literature whose book The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, "a deeply researched, lively biography of the great Puritan preacher, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in 1985," died July 7, the New York Times reported. He was 81. Silverman wrote other well-received biographies, "but it was his first effort in the genre that brought him his greatest acclaim."
Reviewing the book in the Times, Anatole Broyard noted that Silverman "has got hold of one of the most colorful men in American history, and he treats Mather with all the awe, sympathy and skepticism that he deserves.... It is a splendid day of judgment, in which Cotton Mather stands radiant in all his virtues and failings."
Silverman's other books include Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance; Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse; Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage; and Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss : American Self-Liberator, Europe's Eclipsing Sensation, World's Handcuff King & Prison Breaker."