{"id":219202,"date":"2026-01-06T06:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T06:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219202\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T06:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T06:43:08","slug":"michael-schumacher-author-of-francis-ford-coppola-and-eric-clapton-biographies-dies-aged-75-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219202\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Schumacher, author of Francis Ford Coppola and Eric Clapton biographies, dies aged 75 | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Michael Schumacher, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/wisconsin\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wisconsin<\/a> author who produced a diverse array of works ranging from biographies of film-maker Francis Ford Coppola and musician Eric Clapton to accounts of Great Lakes shipwrecks, has died. He was 75.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Schumacher\u2019s daughter, Emily Joy Schumacher, confirmed Monday that her father died on 29 December. She did not provide the cause of death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Schumacher produced such varied biographies as Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker\u2019s Life; Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton; and Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg \u2013 a prominent beat generation poet and writer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Other biographies included Mr Basketball: George Mikan, the Minneapolis Lakers &amp; the Birth of the NBA and Will Eisner: A Dreamer\u2019s Life in Comics. Eisner was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in US comic books and was a pioneer of the graphic-novel concept.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Though he was born in Kansas, Schumacher lived most of his live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He studied political science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, but left the school just one credit short of graduating, his daughter said. He gravitated toward writing at a young age, she said, and basically built two writing careers \u2013 one focused on biographies and another on Great Lakes lore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Living on the shores of Lake Michigan in Kenosha, Schumacher produced accounts of how the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a storm on Lake Superior in 1975; a November 1913 storm that claimed the lives of more than 250 Great Lakes sailors; and how four sailors fought to survive on Lake Michigan after their ship sank in a storm in 1958.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Emily Joy Schumacher described her father as \u201ca history person\u201d and \u201ca good human\u201d. She said he worked longhand, filling countless flip notebooks and later transcribing them on a typewriter. She said she still remembers the sound of the keys clacking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cMy dad was a very generous person with people,\u201d Emily Joy Schumacher said. \u201cHe loved people. He loved talking to people. He loved listening to people. He loved stories. When I think of my dad, I think of him engaged in conversation, coffee in his hand and his notebook.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Schumacher, a Wisconsin author who produced a diverse array of works ranging from biographies of film-maker Francis&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-219202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}