Pulitzer Prize“winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer died Monday night from lung cancer. He was 62.

Cramer is heralded for both his political and sports writing. His 1992 book, What It Takes: The Way to the White House, an in-depth profile of the 1988 U.S. presidential election is lauded in his New York Times obituary as “among the finest books about American politics ever written.” In a statement, U.S. vice-president Joe Biden referred to Cramer as “an unmatched talent who set an enormously high bar for political journalism.”

Born 1950 in Rochester, New York, Cramer attended Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism, then worked as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and as a Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Cramer also contributed to publications such as Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and Esquire, for which he wrote a famous profile of baseball legend Ted Williams. He was the author of several books, including Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, published in 2000, and How Israel Lost: The Four Questions, published in 2004.

In December, the Smoking Gun website revealed that Hachette Book Group had filed a lawsuit against Cramer for failing to deliver a manuscript on New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, scheduled for a 2014 release under its Warner Books imprint. Hachette was demanding repayment of the $550,000 advance, part of a $1.5 million, two-book deal signed in 2006. In June, Cramer told the New York Daily News that he had put the book on hiatus. “I just have another thing I have to get done, he said in the interview. I’m eager to get done with what I’m doing so I can get back on the book.

In a statement posted by Publishers Marketplace, a Hachette spokesperson says, “We were very surprised to hear of Mr. Cramer’s illness. We had been trying to contact him for well over a year and unfortunately received no response despite repeated attempts, so litigation was a last means recourse.”