Bernard Asbell; Books Included 3 on Roosevelts

Bernard Asbell, a prolific author of nonfiction, including three books on the Franklin Roosevelts and a history of the oral contraceptive, has died.

He was 77 and died Feb. 1 in State College, Pa.

Asbell wrote 12 books, largely dealing with history, government and politics.

His first book, “When F.D.R. Died,” was a New York Times bestseller in 1962. He also wrote “The F.D.R. Memoirs,” in which he speculated that the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, was that of husband and wife in every way but sex.

The latter book included an introduction by the late president’s daughter, Anna Roosevelt Halsted, that said Asbell’s “insight . . . rings amazingly true to me.” Asbell later was editor of “Mother and Daughter: The Letters of Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt.”

Less well received was his 1983 tale of Gerald Amster’s daring escape from a Soviet gulag, co-written with Amster and called “Transit Point Moscow.” The story was characterized as fiction by the American Embassy in Moscow, which denied that Amster had ever escaped or that it had been involved in negotiations for his release. Asbell acknowledged that parts of the book were “chiefly an entertainment” but rationalized that even if Amster had “pulled a successful con on me, there was no social harm done.”

Asbell’s 1995 book, “The Pill: The Biography of the Drug That Changed the World,” was widely reviewed but criticized in major publications for its lack of much original reporting.

He also was the author of a book with Joe Paterno, the football coach at Pennsylvania State University, called “Paterno: By the Book.”

Asbell, a New York native, taught writing at Yale and Clark universities and later became an associate professor of English at Penn State.