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FDR's Last Year
A monumental book that cuts through the headlines and dry reportage to create an intimate portrait of a great leader... Here is the President eager to see the fulfillment of his dreams for a troubled world...a man often sunk in apathy, weariness, and pain, yet able to resume his characteristic sprightliness in public and with cherished friends...a man sometimes vacillating in his decisions but driving himself to the end, until at last this exhausted giant was laid to rest in his beloved rose garden.
633 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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About the author
Jim Bishop
58 books38 followersJames Alonzo "Jim" Bishop (November 21, 1907 – July 26, 1987) was an American journalist and author.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he dropped out of school after eighth grade. In 1923, he studied typing, shorthand and bookkeeping, and in 1929 began work as a copy boy at the New York Daily News. In 1930, he got a job as a cub reporter at New York Daily Mirror, where he worked until 1943, when he joined Collier's Magazine. He remained until 1945.
His plans to write for his friend and mentor, Hollywood producer Mark Hellinger, ended with Hellinger's death in 1947. Bishop wrote a biography of Hellinger in 1952. From 1946 to 1948, he was executive editor of Liberty magazine, then became director of the literary department at the Music Corporation of America until 1951. He was then founding editor of Gold Medal Books (the juvenile division of Fawcett Publications) until 1953. In the 1950s, Bishop would do his writing at the Jersey Shore in Sea Bright, New Jersey, going back to his home in Teaneck, New Jersey on weekends to see his wife and children.[1] In 1957, he started his column, "Jim Bishop: Reporter" with King Features Syndicate, which continued until 1983. It also landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.
The remainder of his career was spent writing biographical books about notable figures, and Christian-themed books. His book The Day Lincoln Was Shot was published in 1955, and became an instant best-seller. Bishop also wrote The Day Christ Died, The Day Christ Was Born, and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed book was FDR's Last Year: April 1944-April 1945, which brought to public awareness the secrecy that surrounded President Franklin D. Roosevelt's declining health during World War II.
The Day Lincoln Was Shot was dramatized on TV twice, first as a 1956 live special starring Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln and shown on the Ford Star Jubilee anthology series, and again as a 1998 made-for-television film starring Lance Henriksen as Lincoln. The Day Christ Died was made into a television film in 1980, starring Chris Sarandon as Jesus Christ, and Keith Michell as Pontius Pilate.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he dropped out of school after eighth grade. In 1923, he studied typing, shorthand and bookkeeping, and in 1929 began work as a copy boy at the New York Daily News. In 1930, he got a job as a cub reporter at New York Daily Mirror, where he worked until 1943, when he joined Collier's Magazine. He remained until 1945.
His plans to write for his friend and mentor, Hollywood producer Mark Hellinger, ended with Hellinger's death in 1947. Bishop wrote a biography of Hellinger in 1952. From 1946 to 1948, he was executive editor of Liberty magazine, then became director of the literary department at the Music Corporation of America until 1951. He was then founding editor of Gold Medal Books (the juvenile division of Fawcett Publications) until 1953. In the 1950s, Bishop would do his writing at the Jersey Shore in Sea Bright, New Jersey, going back to his home in Teaneck, New Jersey on weekends to see his wife and children.[1] In 1957, he started his column, "Jim Bishop: Reporter" with King Features Syndicate, which continued until 1983. It also landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.
The remainder of his career was spent writing biographical books about notable figures, and Christian-themed books. His book The Day Lincoln Was Shot was published in 1955, and became an instant best-seller. Bishop also wrote The Day Christ Died, The Day Christ Was Born, and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed book was FDR's Last Year: April 1944-April 1945, which brought to public awareness the secrecy that surrounded President Franklin D. Roosevelt's declining health during World War II.
The Day Lincoln Was Shot was dramatized on TV twice, first as a 1956 live special starring Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln and shown on the Ford Star Jubilee anthology series, and again as a 1998 made-for-television film starring Lance Henriksen as Lincoln. The Day Christ Died was made into a television film in 1980, starring Chris Sarandon as Jesus Christ, and Keith Michell as Pontius Pilate.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 16, 2020
This is a detailed examination of Franklin Roosevelt’s last year of life. He died April 12th, 1945.
Franklin Roosevelts’ life was a transcendent one and he was a major figure not only in his own country, but world-wide. His twelve years as the leader of a major nation during times of extreme turmoil took its toll and shortened his life span.
>
Franklin Roosevelt's ancestral home at Hyde Park which he visited frequently during his last year.
In the last year of his life his main goal, aside from ending the war in both Germany and Japan, was to establish the United Nations. The preliminary work was started on this way back in August of 1941 when the Atlantic Charter was signed with Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland. Throughout all this the ghost of the failed League of Nations was always in the background.
There is much detail in this 650-page book – and there are over 200 pages on what transpired at the Yalta Conference of 1945. The author makes much of the failure of both Churchill and Roosevelt to constrain Stalin in acquiring much of Eastern Europe – especially Poland. However, agreement was reached at Yalta to have free and unfettered elections in Poland and to have the Poles who went into exile, join with the Lublin government that Stalin had set-up. This never happened; Stalin did not live up to this agreement. With Stalin’s Red Army ensconced in Eastern Europe there was not much that Roosevelt and Churchill could do besides pleading fitfully to Stalin to adhere to what he had agreed to at Yalta.
Roosevelt came out of Yalta with his two major goals intact – Soviet participation in the United Nations and an agreement from Stalin to participate in the war against Japan, after the Germans had surrendered. There were secret protocols to this – the Soviet Union was granted land and concessions from both China and Japan. The author minimized these two accomplishments.
The author points out that in March of 1944 Roosevelt was examined by a heart specialist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, and was diagnosed with serious issues surrounding his heart and circulatory system. Franklin never asked Dr. Bruenn any questions regarding these examinations – and why Dr. Bruenn accompanied Franklin daily for the rest of his life. It was kind of like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” scenario. Dr. Bruenn did make the standard recommendations – get more rest, cut down on the cigarettes… Many noticed Franklin Roosevelts' deteriorating physical appearance throughout the last year of his life. He continued to loss weight.
This is an exhilarating book to read of this crucial time in twentieth century history with the major historical figures interacting – Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle. They all wanted to end the war – but each were pursuing different agendas for the aftermath. F.D.R.'s culminating purpose was the United Nations. The author believes that Roosevelt had been aspiring to this since 1920 when the United States failed to join the League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt learnt from his predecessors mistakes and worked vigilantly to ensure that it would not happen again. To inaugurate and instill the United Nations in world affairs was the main reason that Franklin Roosevelt chose to run for a fourth term in 1944.
What is most interesting in the character of Franklin Roosevelt was his ability to try different approaches to resolve a problem. He was not afraid to make a mistake. If something did not work out it would be discarded and another attempt would be made. He was never in search of utopia. He was also a master at simplifying problems and their solutions – putting it into words that all could comprehend.
Like Churchill, he did make the error of trusting and believing in the word of Stalin. Some of this may have sprung from the dire position of the Soviet Union in 1941-42 when Stalin needed all the help he could get. By 1944 Stalin was in a position of power – and much more menacing.
This book looks at both the political and the personal – its an astonishing journey through this vital time period. Its’ a candid and emotional portrait of a key 20th century man.
The grave of Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt in the rose garden at Hyde Park
With his dog Fala - the Franklin Delano Memorial in Washington DC
Franklin Roosevelts’ life was a transcendent one and he was a major figure not only in his own country, but world-wide. His twelve years as the leader of a major nation during times of extreme turmoil took its toll and shortened his life span.
>
Franklin Roosevelt's ancestral home at Hyde Park which he visited frequently during his last year.
In the last year of his life his main goal, aside from ending the war in both Germany and Japan, was to establish the United Nations. The preliminary work was started on this way back in August of 1941 when the Atlantic Charter was signed with Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland. Throughout all this the ghost of the failed League of Nations was always in the background.
There is much detail in this 650-page book – and there are over 200 pages on what transpired at the Yalta Conference of 1945. The author makes much of the failure of both Churchill and Roosevelt to constrain Stalin in acquiring much of Eastern Europe – especially Poland. However, agreement was reached at Yalta to have free and unfettered elections in Poland and to have the Poles who went into exile, join with the Lublin government that Stalin had set-up. This never happened; Stalin did not live up to this agreement. With Stalin’s Red Army ensconced in Eastern Europe there was not much that Roosevelt and Churchill could do besides pleading fitfully to Stalin to adhere to what he had agreed to at Yalta.
Roosevelt came out of Yalta with his two major goals intact – Soviet participation in the United Nations and an agreement from Stalin to participate in the war against Japan, after the Germans had surrendered. There were secret protocols to this – the Soviet Union was granted land and concessions from both China and Japan. The author minimized these two accomplishments.
The author points out that in March of 1944 Roosevelt was examined by a heart specialist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, and was diagnosed with serious issues surrounding his heart and circulatory system. Franklin never asked Dr. Bruenn any questions regarding these examinations – and why Dr. Bruenn accompanied Franklin daily for the rest of his life. It was kind of like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” scenario. Dr. Bruenn did make the standard recommendations – get more rest, cut down on the cigarettes… Many noticed Franklin Roosevelts' deteriorating physical appearance throughout the last year of his life. He continued to loss weight.
This is an exhilarating book to read of this crucial time in twentieth century history with the major historical figures interacting – Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle. They all wanted to end the war – but each were pursuing different agendas for the aftermath. F.D.R.'s culminating purpose was the United Nations. The author believes that Roosevelt had been aspiring to this since 1920 when the United States failed to join the League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt learnt from his predecessors mistakes and worked vigilantly to ensure that it would not happen again. To inaugurate and instill the United Nations in world affairs was the main reason that Franklin Roosevelt chose to run for a fourth term in 1944.
What is most interesting in the character of Franklin Roosevelt was his ability to try different approaches to resolve a problem. He was not afraid to make a mistake. If something did not work out it would be discarded and another attempt would be made. He was never in search of utopia. He was also a master at simplifying problems and their solutions – putting it into words that all could comprehend.
Like Churchill, he did make the error of trusting and believing in the word of Stalin. Some of this may have sprung from the dire position of the Soviet Union in 1941-42 when Stalin needed all the help he could get. By 1944 Stalin was in a position of power – and much more menacing.
This book looks at both the political and the personal – its an astonishing journey through this vital time period. Its’ a candid and emotional portrait of a key 20th century man.
The grave of Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt in the rose garden at Hyde Park
With his dog Fala - the Franklin Delano Memorial in Washington DC
September 21, 2024
FDR'S LAST YEAR: April 1944 - April 1945 offers the reader both a poignant and incisive view of the final months in the life of one of America's great Presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What amazed me in reading this book is how it was that 2 of the U.S. Navy's physicians charged with caring for the President never disclosed to him that he was a dying man. Nor did they inform his family of the exact nature of his steadily declining health. FDR submitted himself to health checks pretty much every month over the last year of his life. But frankly, FDR was someone with an indomitable spirit and ebullient personality who was determined to shepherd the U.S. to victory in World War II and help establish the foundations for a lasting peace via the United Nations. He never queried either Admiral Ross T. McIntire or Lt. Commander Howard Bruenn (both of FDR's physicians) as to the various ailments (e.g. high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and an increasing hardening of the arteries) that were gradually sapping him of his usual zest and vigor. FDR simply got on with the job, was renominated (though with a different running mate, Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, because the Democratic Party bosses did not want to retain the previous Vice President - Henry Wallace - because of his liberal leanings and their sense that FDR would not likely live out a 4th term as President), ran a somewhat perfunctory re-election campaign against Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, and once re-elected, met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at Yalta in February 1945, which proved to be the last Big Three conference FDR would attend.
The following remarks in the book I felt pretty much summed up the feelings about the Yalta Conference shortly after FDR had returned to the U.S. to report to Congress about it: “Roosevelt admirers called Yalta a triumph; his enemies referred to it as a defeat. It was both. He won a little, gave a lot. Personally, he was far removed from the vigorous champion of 1933. Fatigue and fear made him mellow and malleable. He made an error in seeing himself as the supreme arbiter between Stalin and Churchill; he was the rich target of two impoverished men. At moments when sparks were struck, he lapsed into stories which had but the barest relevance to the issue; at others he bargained shrewdly until he saw Stalin stand and rip the back of a chair – then he backed down a little at a time. In a childish way, he delighted in proving to Stalin that there could be no collusion between FDR and Churchill because he opposed and lectured the British Prime Minister at every opportunity. He was a man who despised treachery and deceit, and yet he permitted the Soviets to claim that the Big Three had no power to form a Polish government without consulting the Poles, while, on the other hand, he disposed of property belonging to a member of the Big Five --- China. Even the final communiqué was designed to lull the watching world into believing that there was noble unity among Russia, Great Britain and the United States.”
Though coming in at 939 pages, FDR's LAST YEAR never flagged and made for very compelling reading, revealing much about FDR's personal life and how the impact of his death affected his family, close aides, Harry S. Truman, and political contemporaries - as well as the nation at large.
The following remarks in the book I felt pretty much summed up the feelings about the Yalta Conference shortly after FDR had returned to the U.S. to report to Congress about it: “Roosevelt admirers called Yalta a triumph; his enemies referred to it as a defeat. It was both. He won a little, gave a lot. Personally, he was far removed from the vigorous champion of 1933. Fatigue and fear made him mellow and malleable. He made an error in seeing himself as the supreme arbiter between Stalin and Churchill; he was the rich target of two impoverished men. At moments when sparks were struck, he lapsed into stories which had but the barest relevance to the issue; at others he bargained shrewdly until he saw Stalin stand and rip the back of a chair – then he backed down a little at a time. In a childish way, he delighted in proving to Stalin that there could be no collusion between FDR and Churchill because he opposed and lectured the British Prime Minister at every opportunity. He was a man who despised treachery and deceit, and yet he permitted the Soviets to claim that the Big Three had no power to form a Polish government without consulting the Poles, while, on the other hand, he disposed of property belonging to a member of the Big Five --- China. Even the final communiqué was designed to lull the watching world into believing that there was noble unity among Russia, Great Britain and the United States.”
Though coming in at 939 pages, FDR's LAST YEAR never flagged and made for very compelling reading, revealing much about FDR's personal life and how the impact of his death affected his family, close aides, Harry S. Truman, and political contemporaries - as well as the nation at large.
July 18, 2007
This is one of my favorite historical works written by one of my favorite historians, Jim Bishop. Roosevelt died almost 15 years before I was born, but from all accounts he was clearly not a well man when the American voters selected him to be their president for an unprecedented fourth term. A few months later, he died, and Harry Truman became one of the most unlikely presidents in our history. How much did the American public know when it voted to keep FDR in the White House in 1944? This book goes into great detail about a remarkable year in our history. I would recommend it to anyone.
April 8, 2014
I know I've read this book long ago. Undoubtedly it was during one of my read about FDR jags. The man was dying when the book opens but his Navy doctor, FDR himself and everyone else wouldn't acknowledge it. He never asked doctors about his health and they made sure not to tell him --or anyone else. Makes an amazing story of what this man could will himself to do (truly superhuman)--but that's not what struck me. Meticulously detailed about the official work of the President, the chapters on Yalta are remarkable. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea but the back and forth between Churchill, Stalin and FDR does raise the question on how the Big 3 made it through the war and how the UN came to be. For the first time I stopped to realize that FDR's view was principled, noble and dreadfully naive. The man believed in personal diplomacy. Look someone in eye, explain yourself and you've made a friend and ally. Too bad the rest of the world doesn't work that way. I must also give Bishop credit for showing us a Charles de Gaulle even more arrogant, odious and infuriating that we had imagined. Yuck!
Want to read
March 20, 2025"Details the fantastic cover-up involving medical men and government officials alike, of the state of the President's physical and mental health in the crucial last year of the war. The image of Roosevelt at Yalta is that of a sick and hopelessly naive old man, hypnotized by his own platitudes, who didn't know what was going on. What "went on," of course, was the caning up of Eastern Europe for Uncle Joe."
IHR Revisionist Bibliography 1981
https://archive.is/LWkOQ
IHR Revisionist Bibliography 1981
https://archive.is/LWkOQ
900-999-geography-history
November 6, 2019973.9170924
July 4, 2013
Exhaustively detailed book about Franklin Roosevelt's last year of life, April 12th, 1944 to April 12th, 1945, the great travails of D-Day, the campaign of '44 against Tom Dewey and the dropping of Henry Wallace, disputes with Churchill and his own generals, the Manhattan project, Yalta and the aftermath of his death. Excellently done by the master of detail, Jim Bishop.
Want to read
October 11, 2012FDR is one of my heroes. Bishop's book is well-researched but gets off to a slow start.
September 6, 2013
Compelling reading from start to finish.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews