An intriguing but ultimately unconvincing what-if about FDR’s death.
Lomazow (Neurology/Mount Sinai School of Medicine) and New York Post associate editorial-page editor Fettmann challenge the conventional wisdom about what killed President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In the last few years of his life, Roosevelt’s health rapidly declined, and he became visibly frail and thin. On April 12, 1945, the president complained of a headache and collapsed and died shortly afterward. The accepted cause of Roosevelt’s death, as diagnosed by his cardiologist, was a sudden, unpredictable brain hemorrhage. Lomazow and Fettmann present a circumstantial case that Roosevelt was actually felled by long-known skin cancer that had metastasized to his brain. They also charge that Roosevelt’s physicians and advisors kept the president’s cancer secret from the public, before and after his death. The skin cancer, the authors write, was a fast-growing dark brown spot above the president’s left eyebrow, which is apparent in photographs. Photos from the last few years of his life show telltale markers of undocumented surgery on the spot. By then Roosevelt showed several signs of metastasized melanoma, the authors claim, including severe stomach and vision problems. Lomazow and Fettmann’s analysis of the president’s last months, including his final speech to Congress in March 1945, where he rambled and was clearly unwell, is effective and thought-provoking in this context. The president’s fatal brain hemorrhage, they point out, could also have been caused by a metastatic tumor. It’s also easy to entertain the authors’ charges of a medical cover-up, given Roosevelt’s long history of hiding his medical issues from the public—in particular, his longtime paralysis. But even the authors note that there’s no smoking gun to prove their theories—there was no autopsy on the president, and his medical records are long lost. As a result, despite the authors’ impressive research, much of the book is based in mere conjecture. They also do their argument no favors by quoting sensationalistic magazines and conspiracy theorists from the ’40s, who share their views.
An intriguing but ultimately unconvincing what-if about FDR’s death.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58648-744-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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