Francis Russell was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author specializing in American history and historical figures. Russell is best known for his book on Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding

Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th President of the United States . A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate , as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator...

, The Shadow of Blooming Grove. He graduated from Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...

, and from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, with a master's degree in 1937.
He served in the Canadian Army from 1941 to 1946.

He married Rosalind Lawson. He had a daughter from a previous marriage.

His papers are kept at Bowdoin College.

Russell became embroiled in a lawsuit with some of the heirs of Warren Harding around the publication of his 1968 biography of the former president. Alleging that they had been embarrassed by the previous publication of some of the love letters of Harding, the heirs sued and won a judgement preventing the publication of the letters by Russell.

His work on the Sacco-Vanzetti case, the award-winning Tragedy In Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case (1962), continued with the 1986 publication of Sacco & Vanzetti: The Case Resolved. In it, he claimed to solve the case, proposing that only Nicola Sacco was guilty and Bartholomew Vanzetti was innocent.

Awards

• 1963 Edgar Award
  Edgar Award
  The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
  
   for Best Fact Crime book, for Tragedy In Dedham : The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case
• 1964 Guggenheim Fellowship

Works

• Tragedy In Dedham : The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, McGraw-Hill, 1962
• Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill (with the Editors of American Heritage) (1963)
• The Great Interlude (1964)
• The Shadow of Blooming Grove (published in the UK as President Harding: His Life and Times 1866-1923) (1968)
• The Horizon Concise History of Germany (1973)
• Adams: An American Dynasty, American Heritage Pub. Co., 1976, ISBN 9780070543027; reprint Castle Books, 2005, ISBN 9780785818823
• A City in Terror: 1919, the Boston Police Strike, Viking Press, 1975, ISBN 9780670224494; reprint, Beacon Press, 2005, ISBN 9780807050330
• The President Makers: From Mark Hanna to Joseph P. Kennedy (1976)
• Sacco & Vanzetti: The Case Resolved (1986)
• The Knave of Boston & Other Ambiguous Massachusetts Characters (1987)

External links