Lee Edwards, a self-described “cradle conservative” who participated in key moments in the modern conservative movement and then became its all but official historian, writing flattering books about the Heritage Foundation, Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley Jr. and other subjects, died on Dec. 12 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 92.

His daughter Elizabeth Edwards Spalding said the cause was aggressive pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed in June.

Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.

Mr. Edwards’s father, Willard Edwards, was a star political reporter for the anti-New Deal Chicago Tribune. Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon were regular guests at the family home outside Washington.

Lee Edwards went on to help found Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization that grew out of a weekend retreat at the Connecticut estate of Mr. Buckley, the founder of National Review magazine. He worked as a press aide on Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign and participated in the drafting of “Mandate for Leadership,” a 1980 policy blueprint compiled by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, that the Reagan administration embraced. “Mandate for Leadership” served as an inspiration for Project 2025, the Heritage document meant to guide the second Trump presidency.

Mr. Edwards was the author of more than a dozen books, which he called a “canon” of modern conservative history. Among them were biographies of Mr. Goldwater and Edwin Meese III, Mr. Reagan’s attorney general.

But he was neither a conservative thought leader nor a political adviser to conservative candidates. He was largely a promoter of others’ ideas, and his books mainly addressed the faithful.

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