WORCESTER, Mass., March 11 (UPI) -- Joe McGinniss, author of riveting bestsellers about Richard Nixon and ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, died of prostate cancer, his lawyer said. He was 71.
Friend and attorney Dennis Holahan said McGinniss died Monday at the University of Massachusetts medical center in Worcester, CNN reported Tuesday.
The best-selling author had been battling prostate cancer for two years.
McGinniss chronicled the murder case of former Green Beret Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald in the 1983 book "Fatal Vision" and tracked the marketing and campaigning of Nixon on the campaign trail in the 1969 tome "The Selling of the President 1968."
He camped out next door to Palin -- the 2008 vice presidential candidate -- for several months in Alaska for "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin."
Born in New York, McGinnis had just graduated from Holy Cross College in Massachusetts when the Philadelphia Bulletin hired him, the Philadelphia Daily News said Tuesday. At 23, he moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which sent him to Vietnam.
MacDonald envisioned McGinniss' "Fatal Vision" as something more sympathetic than it was and sued the author unsuccessfully.
His publisher, Simon & Schuster, said McGinniss lived in Massachusetts with his wife, Nancy Doherty, who also is an editor and writer, CNN said. He had five children and seven grandchildren.
