Edward Jay Epstein, an author whose deeply researched books challenged conventional wisdom about controversies ranging from whether John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin to whether the whistle-blower Edward Snowden was really a Russian spy, died Jan. 9 in Manhattan. He was 88. A professional skeptic, Mr. Epstein wrote more than two dozen nonfiction books, many involving allegations of government conspiracies and corporate dereliction. He earned his doctorate in 1972 from the Harvard-M.I.T. [...]

Herman Raucher, who turned his memories of a summer as a teenager in a Massachusetts beach town, including one of a sexual encounter with a young war widow, into the screenplay for the nostalgic 1971 film “Summer of ’42,” died on Dec. 28 in Stamford, CT. He was 95. “Summer” won an Oscar for Michel Legrand’s original score, and received four other nominations, including one for Mr. Raucher’s screenplay. It was the fifth-highest-grossing film of [...]

Menachem Daum, a filmmaker who co-produced a groundbreaking 1997 documentary that illuminated the cloistered world of America’s Hasidim, died on Jan. 7 in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He was 77. What made the documentary, “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,” so striking was Mr. Daum’s ability to get people who scorn movies and television to sit on camera for revealing interviews, allowing him to chronicle their mores and rituals. The resulting film offered a complex portrait [...]

Leon Wildes, a New York immigration lawyer who successfully fought the United States government’s attempt to deport John Lennon, died on Jan. 8 in Manhattan. He was 90. From early 1972 to fall 1975, Mr. Wildes battled the Nixon administration and immigration officials for targeting Mr. Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, marshaling a series of legal arguments revealing that Mr. Lennon, an antiwar activist and a vocal critic of President Richard M. Nixon had [...]

Norma Barzman, a screenwriter who moved to Europe in the late 1940s rather than be subject to the congressional investigations and professional ostracism that overtook her industry for a decade, died on Dec. 17 r her home in Beverly Hills, CA. She was 103 and widely considered to be one of the last surviving victims of the Hollywood blacklist. Mrs. Barzman and her husband and fellow screenwriter, Ben Barzman, were among the hundreds of film [...]

Zvi Zamir, who as the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, led a campaign to crush Palestinian terrorism after 11 Israelis were killed at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. He also relayed a warning to his government that Egypt and Syria were about to start the Yom Kippur War. Mr. Zamir died on Jan. 2. He was 98. “Zamir led a determined and initiative-taking approach in the State of Israel’s fight against Palestinian terrorism, which [...]

Claire M. Fagin, an educator and advocate for change in the profession of nursing, died Jan. 16 at her home in Manhattan. She was 97. Dr. Fagin was named dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. During her tenure, she tripled the enrollment, established a doctoral program in nursing, and built Penn into a widely acknowledged world leader in nursing research and education. In 2006, Penn renamed its Nursing Education Building the Claire [...]

Tanya Berezin, artistic director of the Circle Repertory Theater, died Nov. 29 in San Francisco, at 82. She began her theater career as a stage actress, gaining glowing reviews  for her Off Broadway performances over the years, and she won an Obie Award for her role in Lanford Wilson’s play, “The Mound Builders” in 1975. In 1986, she turned her attention to behind-the-scenes activity, and joined the repertory theater she had helped to found in [...]

Robert Rosenthal, a psychologist renowned as an expert in non-verbal communication, and in what he called “self-fulfilling prophecies” in which subtle and often unconscious gestures can influence behavior, died on Jan. 5 in Riverside, CA. He was 90. Widely considered one of the leading social psychologists of the 20th century, Dr. Rosenthal, who spent much of his career at Harvard, was best known for his work on what he called the Pygmalion effect, concluding that [...]

Nancy E. Adler, a health psychologist whose work helped transform the public understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic status and physical health, died on Jan. 4 at her home in San Francisco. She was 77. Dr. Adler was instrumental in documenting the role that education, income and self-perceived status in society play in predicting health and longevity. Today the connection is well known among public health experts that life expectancy is determined more by zip [...]