SAN FRANCISCO (June 12, 1998 5:27 p.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) - Author Leo Buscaglia, whose books "Love" and "Loving Each Other" helped give greater emphasis to people helping themselves heal emotionally, died Friday of a heart attack, a spokesman for his publisher said. He was 74.
Buscaglia, who earned a reputation as the "King of the Hug" for embracing avid audience members at the end of his feel-good lectures, died at around 1:45 a.m. at his home near Lake Tahoe, Nev., said Patrick Duffy, director of corporate marketing for Slack Inc., a New Jersey publisher.
Duffy could not immediately confirm whether Buscaglia left behind any family.
Buscaglia's books sold more than 11 million copies and helped build the multimillion-dollar self-help book business, which now comprises such authors as Deepak Chopra, John Bradshaw and John Gray. Self-help books accounted for 6.2 percent of the U.S. book market in 1996, according to the American Booksellers Association.
"It is when we ask for love less and begin giving it more that the secret to human love is revealed to us," Buscaglia wrote in 1992's "Born for Love."
"Any action that inhibits is not love," the author also said. "Love is only love when it liberates."
Buscaglia's first book, "Love," was published in 1972 and has never been out of print, his publisher said. His books are available in 19 languages and 24 editions, and his latest book was "Love Cookbook," released in 1994.
One of his books, "The Fall of Freddie the Leaf," was adapted to audio cassette, an educational film and a one-hour ballet. It explored the delicate balance between life and death in a story about how Freddie and his fellow leaves changed with the passing seasons and the coming of winter.
Buscaglia earned a B.A., M.A. and PhD from the University of Southern California. His doctorate is in Language and Speech Pathology. He was a professor-at-large with the university, where he taught for 19 years.
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