FDR's Last Year, April 1944-April 1945,

I am a DoD federal employee with a bachelor's degree in political science. I still recall how much praise and research questions my P.S. professor (Univ. of Utah) presented regarding FDR, including the accomplishments made for our nation. After reading James Alonzo Bishop's fine book, "FDR's Last Year", I can't tell readers enough today what a fascinating closeup, journalistic approach, this book provides of the greatest American President of the 20th century- one with human flaws and leadership abilities. The massive task Bishop took upon himself in recreating this nearly 700-page intimate portrait of a dying titan who presided over the greatest war (after inspiring and implementing sociological changes that will still be guiding American thought and action in future social and political science courses) actually got under way 25 years before the release of the book. From my viewpoint Bishop must surely be our nation's most painstaking researcher-writer (comparable to David McCullough, Barbara Tuchman, Joseph J. Ellis). This book, published by William Morrow, is a bulging treasury which will put all future biographers of FDR in Bishop's debt- for sure. Bishop has erected his own memorial to FDR years before the National Park Service opened the "Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial" near the National Mall. Those immortalized words from the walls of this memorial are clearly brought forward in this book- such words as our "Four Freedoms" of what we are still fighting for to this day. Bishop has done a fabulous job introducing the reader to the flesh and blood of FDR as he deals with the chores of the presidency (family, 4th campaign, travels to Alaska and Yalta), including the world figures of that last year of his life (1 April 1944 - 12 April 1945): Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur, Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito. Of FDR's passing, 12 April 1945, just weeks short of victory in Europe, Bishop took note of a New York Times article that said, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now, that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House..." In my small library, a copy of this book sits next to other treasures: Sandburg's "Abraham Lincoln" (1940), Boorstin's "The Americans" (1974), Branch's "Parting the Waters" (1989), and McCullough's "Truman" (1993).

Professional historians might slight Jim Bishop's work -- "The Day Christ Died;" "The Day Lincoln Was Shot" -- as "popularizations." So they are. Not much new in either of these: just good writing and empathy. There is a role for these qualities, one would think, even in the footnoted world of the professional."FDR's Last Year" lacks footnotes too. Its biblography is barely up to undergraduate term paper standards. It is, without doubt, beautifully written. So far, so good. But, it is more than just a facile rehash of research done by others. It is a moving account of a great human and historical tragedy -- the physical and mental deterioration of the god-like FDR at what should have been his moment of historic triumph.By the spring of '44, when the book opens, President Roosevelt was already on borrowed time. There was a world of difference between the buoyant and vigorous champion of 1933 (or, even, 1943) and the increasingly depressed, distracted, and enervated Chief Executive of the late war years. Bishop does not dance around any of this -- but he does not succomb, either, to the harsher portraiture that has been drawn of a senile and naive FDR about to be taken to the cleaners by the Russians.Some of what the tired president did during his waning months defies rational analysis. What was the purpose of his quixotic meetings with three middle eastern kings on his way back from Yalta? What made him think they would be interested in his hare-brained schemes to "make the desert bloom?" Was his meglomania simply in control here?Yet, Bishop keeps his focus on the main event: FDR's self-destroying mission to create a postwar world that would not self-destruct into war as had the post-Versailles world. For this, his inspiration was his own political mentor -- Woodrow Wilson. While Churchill and Stalin reveled in their own species of cynicism, the tired and dispirited FDR, well-aware he was dying, held to a vision of a world organization that might offer humanity something better than realpolitik.Roosevelt sacrificed himself to this vision. Burned himself out in pursuit of it. Churchill was interested only in British imperialism and FDR saw him for what he was -- a hopeless reactionary brought to power by a temporary crisis. Stalin was -- well, Stalin was the one man who had as much blood on his hands as Hitler. Of the "Big Three," only FDR tried to rise above chauvinism toward a broader, more humane future.This broad view of humanity is exemplified by FDR's contempt for imperialism and his determination not to allow the French back into Indo-China. It is a sobering thought that had he been spared, the Viet Nam War need never have been fought.Bishop gives a compassionate account of FDR's covert romance with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. The dying man, and the aging widow, found inestimable comfort in one another's company. It was too late in the day for both of them. The time for happiness was past. But, they clung to one another as the darkness closed ab

As a former educator and one who has worked for the State Department in our nation's capitol, I found FDR'S LAST YEAR not only to be enjoyable reading but one of the most profoundly written books of history I have ever come across. It was so detailed and I saw FDR for the first time to be thoroughly human.The fact that I discovered this book to be out of print, surprised and disappointed me, to say the least. After I finished, I felt that I had not only lived in the White House that last year, but worked closley with the former President. Love him or hate him, FDR'S LAST YEAR is a must read for all those interested in the history and politics of this country.