TIME: Remembering Richard Ben Cramer

(TIME) - Richard Ben Cramer, a journalist I knew and admired greatly, has passed away at the age of 62.

He will be remembered among political sorts for his magisterial work about the 1988 presidential campaign, What it Takes. I spent a lot of time with Richard that year, riding the buses, talking about books and politics-especially about the risk v. reward calculus when it came to writing books: “Books will break your heart” became our shared mantra, and What it Takes broke his, under-appreciated by his jealous colleagues and under-read by a public too busy and carefree to digest 1000 pages about one of the more boring political races of the past 60 years.