This year’s Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction went to Jewish author Nathan Thrall for his book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. Published days before Oct. 7, the book focuses on a Palestinian father’s efforts to uncover news about his son following a bus crash. The Pulitzer jury called it “…a finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”

While Thrall’s book predates the Oct. 7 attack in Israel by Hamas, his book tour has been conducted in its shadow and has been a frequent magnet for controversy. Some tour stops canceled planned talks by Thrall, saying they would be “insensitive” in the midst of Israel’s war against Hamas. After the book’s publication, a local Jewish federation protested Thrall’s plan to teach a Bard College

course on whether Israel’s treatment of Palestinians could be considered apartheid.

Thrall is a Bard College professor based in Jerusalem; his work often is highly critical of Israel.

Carrie Robbins, a meticulous and resourceful costume designer who worked on more than 30 Broadway shows from the 1960s to the 2000s, died on April 12, in Manhattan. She was 81.

Critics hailed Ms. Robbins’ costumes over the years for transporting audiences to the Spain of Don Quixote, the underworld of early-18th-century London, and the ruined South during the Civil War. For “Grease,” she studied high school yearbooks from the 1950s. For a 1992 musical version of “Anna Karenina,” she found ball gowns from the turn of the 20th century. Describing Ms. Robbins’ work on a 1985 Broadway production of “The Octette Bridge Club,” a play by P.J. Barry set in the 1930s, The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains said she seemed “to have raided every thrift shop in town.” She said her biggest thrill in designing costumes was watching actors transform. “The guys in ‘Grease’ were reluctant to have their hair cut,” she said. “But when we cut it, put them in tapered pants and a jacket with the collar turned up, there they were — swaggering around the stage and flipping grease off their combs.”

Howie Schwab, a sports nerd who parlayed his love of statistics into a long stint at ESPN that was most notable for his starring role as the ultimate trivia expert on the game show, “Stump the Schwab,” died on April 27 in Aventura, FL. He was 63.

On “Stump the Schwab,” three challengers vied to outdo Mr. Schwab in answering questions posed by the host, Stuart Scott. Mr. Schwab almost always won. The show ran from 2004-2006.

ESPN hired him in 1997 as a freelance researcher, promoted him to staff researcher the next year, and put him in charge of the growing research department in 1991. Four years later, he was named coordinating producer of espn.com/. He moved up to coordinating producer of studio production in 1998.

Lesley Hazleton, a British-born Jewish psychologist, journalist and author, whose curiosity about faith and religion led her to write biographies of Muhammad, Mary and Jezebel, died on April 29 at her home, a houseboat in Seattle. She was 78.

She moved to Jerusalem in 1966, at age 20, and lived there through two wars and one peace treaty, working as a journalist for The Jerusalem Post and as a stringer for Time magazine. She left Israel for New York in 1979, wrote the column “Hers” for The New York Times, and embarked on a career as a car columnist for Lear’s magazine and later for The Detroit Free Press. She also had a pilot’s license, and wrote a blog, “Accidental Theologist,” about faith and religion.

Life is a journey, she believed. “It’s not how long I live that matters,” should would say. “It’s how I live. And I intend to do it well, to the end.” And she did.

Jerome Rothenberg, a poet, translator and anthologist whose efforts to bring English-language readers into contact with creative traditions far outside the Western establishment — a field he called ethnopoetics — had an enormous impact on world literature, died on April 21 at his home in Encinitas, CA. He was 92.

By ethnopoetics, Mr. Rothenberg meant poetry from indigenous and other non-Western cultures, including Jewish mysticism, American Indian, Dada, and a range of poetries from Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania, introducing readers to ancient Egyptian coronation events, Comanche peyote songs, and Gabonese death rites.

He taught at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and SUNY Binghamton, but spent most of his career at the University of California, San Diego. He published several books of his own poems, translated others, and presented staged readings. At his death, two titles had been accepted for publication, one of them “In the Shadow of a Mad King,” a recording of Mr. Rothenberg’s poems about Donald Trump.

Sheppie Abramowitz, a political insider who became a powerful ally for refugees around the world, died on April 7 in Washington. She was 88.

For more than five decades, Ms. Abramowitz was active in movements to solve refugee crises — in Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey and Kosovo. She used her deep knowledge of government officials, logistics and the struggles of those fleeing war and oppressive governments to secure real relief. Her husband, Morton I. Abramowitz, was a U.S. ambassador, and she became his humanitarian adjunct, bringing her knowledge to bear when they returned to Washington from abroad.

Ms. Abramowitz established a Washington office for the International Rescue Committee, and became its vice president. She retired from the IRC in 2009.

She is survived by her husband, children, grandchildren and brother, Philip Glass, the composer

Dr. Werner Spitz, a pathologist whose accounts of the traumatic last moments in some of the most sensational American deaths of the past 60 years figured in cases involving President John F. Kennedy, that carried a message of feminist empowerment, died on April 20 in Barrington, R.I. She was 81.

In 1973, Ms. Specht was a copywriter at the McCann-Erickson agency in Manhattan. Preference was created to challenge Clairol’s Nice ‘n Easy. Her copy empowered women, and the tag line has endured all the years since: Because I’m worth it.”