Leonard Kessler, the author and illustrator of hundreds of children’s book for early readers, died on Feb. 16 at his home in Sarasota, FL. He was 101.

Of the more than 300 books Mr. Kessler wrote and illustrated, perhaps the most popular is Mr. Pine’s Purple House, the story of how Mr. Pine set out to distinguish his white house from others on the block with purple paint. When it was published in 1965, it sold widely for 29 cents a copy. But by the mid 1990s, it had been out of print for decades and became a collector’s item, selling for $300 on eBay.

Mr. Kessler often found inspiration in the everyday. The hungry feelings of a small boy on a trip to the supermarket are magnified in Crunch Crunch, the sequel to Plink Plink, a book about feeling thirsty. The Big Red Bus, about a bus that lands in a pothole, snarling traffic, was chosen by The New York Times as one of the best illustrated children’s books of 1957. In 1990, it was a Times crossword clue (Big Red Bus author, 5 Down.)

About the color purple, Mr. Kessler told The Tampa Bay Times in 2005 that purple was his favorite color. “I have a purple door. I have a purple studio. I think purple is a color that vibrates. I think that’s me.”

Richard C. Blum, a financier and major donor to Democrats — largely to his wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California — died March 27 at the family home in San Francisco. He was 86.

Mr. Blum ran his own investment firm, Blum Capital Partners, and during his career as an investment banker and financial manager, his clients included large institutions. With deep pockets, he became a major figure in Democratic politics. His net worth was estimated to exceed $1 billion.

He also held nonprofit positions; at one point he was chairman of the University of California Board of Regents. With the Dalai Lama among his influential friends, Mr. Blum developed an interest in South Asia as the home of Buddhist philosophy, as a recipient of philanthropy, and as a place for adventure. He once led an expedition up part of Mount Everest. In a statement of condolence, President Joe Biden called Mr. Blum “a successful businessman and proud son of California, who dedicated much of his public life to fighting poverty around the globe” through the establishment of the American Himalayan Foundation, a nonprofit group that builds schools and hospitals in Tibet, and the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley, which focuses on innovative solutions to global poverty.

During Ms. Feinstein’s 1990 race to be California’s governor, Mr. Blum described to The New York Times what he called the triathlon of politics: “No. 1,” he said “we get to see on a regular basis everything she’s ever done and I’ve ever done distorted in the newspapers. No. 2, we get to share 17 years of our tax returns with 30 million people. And three, I get to pay to watch all this happen.”

Ken Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff who helped resuscitate Ronald Reagan’s presidency and went on to become a successful lobbyist whose counsel was sought by leaders of both parties, died March 2 in Washington. He was 77.

Mr. Duberstein had joined the Reagan White House in 1981 as the president’s liaison to the House of Representatives, where he helped push through an extensive tax cut by getting conservative Democrats, known as blue dogs, to break with their party. His dogged ways earned him a nickname from Senator Howard Baker Jr., then the majority leader: Duberdog.

He later left the White House to work as a lobbyist, returned in 1987 to rescue the Reagan presidency, which was floundering in part because of public backlash over the Iran-contra scandal to use profits from the sale of weapons to Iran to supply Nicaraguan rebels. Reagan’s “mea culpa” speech, at the behest of Mr. Duberstein, helped turn the presidency around. In 1988, he was named chief of staff.

He was a trustee for the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, and served on the boards of the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Simeon Maslin, 90, of Philadelphia, senior rabbi emeritus at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, former president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and an influential author and speaker on Jewish life, died Jan. 29, at home.

As senior rabbi at Keneseth Israel from 1980 to 1997, Rabbi Maslink spoke often and wrote extensively about his faith and its collision with modern issues. A teacher and mentor to many in the United States, Australia, South Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere, he lectured about the importance of religious diversity in communities, the essential role of women in modern life, world peace, the separation of church and state, and other topics.

He called himself a “religious naturalist,” described God as a “guiding friend,” and published a number of books about leading a Jewish life. “The function of a Jew is to be cocreator, with God, of the world. The task of the human being is to perfect the world, using the tools God gives us,” he said.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a Talmudic scholar and a revered figure among the world’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, died March 18 in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak. He was 94.

Rabbi Kanievsky was known for his analytical prowess and knowledge when it came to the Torah and the dozens of volumes of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud, which he studied year after year. Blessed with a photographic memory, he could recite entire passages.

Rabbi Kanievsky wrote and published dozens of volumes on Jewish law, often focusing on rituals and their ramifications for modern life. Jews regarded him as a modern-day prophet, and would flock to his modest apartment to seek his advice on questions both profound and personal.

Charles Edward Entenmann, 92, who helped expand his family’s Long Island bakery from a local delivery service to a household name, died Feb. 24 in Florida. Entenmann’s, now a supermarket staple, was opened by Charles Entenmann’s grandfather, William, in Brooklyn in 1898. William, an immigrant from Germany, would deliver his baked goods to homes in a horse-drawn wagon.

In 1900, the family moved the bakery to Bay Shore. When his father died in 1951, Charles, his mother and his two brothers started supplying their baked goods to supermarkets. Their packaging introduced see-through boxing, luring customers to their sweets. The 14-acre site in Bay Shore was sold in 1978, has changed hands several times since, and is now owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA.

Charles Entenmann gave generously to Long Island. He supported the Great South Bay WMCA and endowed Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, establishing the Entenmann Family Cardiac Center. He underwrote the development of a self-sustaining power cell at his Biosearch LLC research lab, and also started Biolife LLC, a company that produces health care products to stop bleeding.

Leo Marx, a cultural historian whose landmark book, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, explores the pervasive intrusion of technology on nature and helped to define the field of American studies, died March 8 at his home in Boston. He was 102.

Professor Marx, who taught for many years at MIT, became a pioneer in an eclectic and still evolving quest to determine an American national identity — an amalgam of intellectual history, the history of ideas and literature, and portions of other disciplines, including philosophy, psychology and art history. Professor Marx added technology to the American studies mix.

The dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima crystallized his thinking about technology, politics, nature and literature. “Quite apart from its tragic consequences, no other event in my lifetime so effectively dramatized the nexus between science-based technological progress and the cumulative, long-term degradation of the environment,” Professor Marx wrote.