Review of David M. Jordan's FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944

Since I am sensitive to the fact that posting a negative review on Amazon will adversely affect the sales of Mr Jordan's work (my critics were aware of this and used it to that end) I have decided instead to confine my comments to this blog.


Perhaps this review will be viewed as sour grapes, but as long as non-physician historians continue to opine upon medical facts, I feel obliged to defend the thesis put forth in "FDR's Deadly Secret" that Mr. Jordan dismissed in one sentence as "not dispositive".


This work once again echoes "the gospel according to Bruenn", that has influenced every FDR biography since James MacGregor Burns' Pulitzer Prize-winning work done in collaboration with Dr. Bruenn in 1969.
Mr Jordan even quotes Turner Catledge's July 1944 account of FDR's seizures without ever stating the reason for this behavior. My neurological colleagues, ones who are qualified to judge the veracity of my allegations, have chosen to publish my article on FDR's epilepsy as fact in their prestigious journal NEUROLOGY.


FDR's battle with cancer and other health problems played an ongoing and important role in many of his most important decisions, especially his obsessive focus on the establishment of the United Nations. FDR ran in 1944 because he felt that he could best accomplish this goal as a sitting president.


FDR's Deadly Secret has taken the important step of exposing the long-standing deception perpetrated by FDR and carried out by Doctors McIntire and Bruenn. Without consideration of the reality of FDR's health, any narrative of his life, especially from the period after 1940, cannot be considered valid.