Tony Judt dies of Lou Gehrig's disease complications
9th August 2010
Celebrated yet controversial historian
Tony Judt has passed away at the age of 62.
London-born Judt, a professor of European studies at New York
University, died after suffering complications associated with a
form of motor neurone disease.
The author was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,
which is commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2008.
After discovering he had the condition and becoming
wheelchair-bound within a few months, the writer revealed that he
considered euthanasia.
'I've thought about euthanasia a lot, not for tomorrow, but one
has to plan for it because the likely trajectory is that you lose
your capacity to express yourself long before you die,' Judt
explained.
Postwar,
his 900-page account of European history that covered the launch of
the Marshall Plan in 1945 through to the fall of communism, was a
runner-up for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
His other works included Reappraisals,
which examines society's tendency to forget its recent past, and
Ill
Fares The Land - an analysis of how western public affairs
have gone amiss in the past 30 years.