So it turned out that when his own life was cut short, by leukemia, at age fifty-four in 1970, Hofstadter had already written a lifetime’s worth of lasting history. “It seems almost unkind to speak of Richard Hofstadter as a fulfilled historian — when he was cut down so cruelly in his prime,” Woodward said at the memorial service. “Yet in quantity as well as quality, in grace of style as well as in subtlety of scholarship … the richness and abundance of his creative work proclaim a valorous fulfillment.”