Mary Ellin Barrett, one of songwriter Irving Berlin’s three daughters and the author of a biography of her famous father, Irving Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir, died July 16 in Manhattan. She was 95. He often seemed a “shaky, uncertain man,” Ms. Barrett wrote of her father, yet out came hit after hit. In his lifetime, he wrote about 1,500 songs. A Russian immigrant, he wrote “God Bless America,” which has been thought of as an [...]

Melissa Bank, whose first book, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, became a global publishing phenomenon in 1999, died on August 9 at her home in East Hampton. She was 61. The book is a collection of seven stories about a girl named Jane Rosenal, from age 14 until her mid-30s, during which time she navigates sex, death, money and friends. Jane is sharp, independent and bitingly funny — not unlike Ms. Bank herself, [...]

Dr. Leon E. Rosenberg, a pioneer in the field of medical genetics, died on July 22 at his home in Lawrenceville, NJ. He was 89. Dr. Rosenberg joined the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine in 1965. While at Yale, he led research into inherited metabolic disorders, filling his lectures with stories of children who had presented inexplicable disorders. He repeatedly showed their causes to be their bodies’ inability to metabolize various acids, conditions [...]

Elana Dykewomon, a writer and activist  who spent decades exploring her identity as a gay woman and a Jew, died August 7 at her home in Oakland, CA. She was 72. Ms. Dykewomon chose her pen name (jettisoning the “man” in her new name) and wrote three novels and five collections of poetry and short stories, gaining ardent attention from the gay community. She was in hospice at her home, with friends, preparing to watch [...]

Prof. Howard Rosenthal, a political scientist whose pioneering research confirmed quantitatively that Congress is more politically polarized than at any point since Reconstruction, died on July 28 at his home in San Francisco. He was 83. “Professor Rosenthal was a trailblazing figure in political science, who collaborated with economists and drew on game theory and other formal methods to help define the modern subfield of political economy,” said Prof. Alan Patten, chairman of the politics [...]