Faculty Bibliography

While revisionist historians have challenged many standard interpretations of events in the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, one account has remained virtually unscathed: an article about Roosevelt's terminal illness and death written by one of his physicians, Howard G. Bruenn. Yet this article, like all historical documents, was not "objective" but rather a reflection of social and political forces--both from the 1940s, when Roosevelt became ill, and from 1970, when Bruenn's piece was published. This essay argues that Bruenn, the Roosevelt family, and the historian James MacGregor Burns worked together to craft a document that told the story of Roosevelt's decline with a predictable trajectory.

Fortunately, thanks in part to flu vaccines and other public health measures, the last three pandemics have been progressively milder from over 50 million dead worldwide in the worst flu pandemic in 1918,102 million dead in 1957, to 1 million fatalities in 1968 (see 'The World's 'Most Unwanted' List,' p. 14). You've probably heard your parents or teachers talk about the possibility of a bird flu pandemic. Or perhaps you even saw the frightening TV docudrama shown on a major network that followed the events of a fictitious bird flu outbreak among, humans, and the widespread panic that followed. However, our public discussions of a possible flu pandemic from the H5N1 bird flu have been informed largely by the ghost of the 1918 Spanish Flu, which was caused by a new flu virus, known as H1N1.