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December 5, 2009

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Self-help author Buscaglia dead at 74

Friday, June 12, 1998 | 10:55 a.m.

Buscaglia, a California educator, examined the phenomenon of human love as the one unifying force of life in his first book in 1972, "Love."

He died of a heart attack at 1:45 a.m. today at his home on the shores of Lake Tahoe, said Pat Duffy, director of corporate marketing for Slack Inc., a publisher in Thorofare, N.J.

A dynamic speaker, Buscaglia was known for ending his lectures by hugging any members of the audience who would line up for the embrace.

More than 11 million copies of his books have been sold in 20 languages. His latest release in 1994 was "Love Cookbook."

One of his books, "The Fall of Freddie the Leaf," was adapted to audio cassette, educational film and a one-hour ballet. It explored the delicate balance between life and death in a thought-provoking story about how Freddie and his companion leaves change with the passing seasons and the coming of winter.

The University of Southern California honored him in 1991 by establishing the Leo F. Buscaglia Scholarship for Inner City Teachers Education.

At a lecture in Denver with civil rights activist Dick Gregory that year he said that death "is only morbid if you never lived."

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