The President was paralysed from the waist down, but concealed the extent of his disability from the public. The secretary of state was old and frail, debilitated by a highly contagious and usually fatal disease that was as closely guarded a secret as his wife's religion which was considered a problem in those years. The president's friend and confidant was a closet homosexual who on occasion proposition black railroad porters when drunk. This book is about secrecy and power during the most troubled era in recent U.S. history. REVIEWS: ?Secret Affairs is a fascinating narrative whose pulse never quite detracts from the fact that this is serious history of a high quality. The dramas, ambiguities, and secrets of the relationship between Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles?is superbly narrated. The vigor of Gellman's tale underlines the robust positions taken on large issues to do with the Roosevelt era, in particular the question of the administration's level of knowledge regarding the fate of European Jews during World War II.? -----Thomas Keneally author of Schindler's List ?Irwin Gellman explores the little known hierarchy of the Sate Department during the New Deal years and World War II and brilliantly illuminates their impact upon Franklin D. Roosevelt and the conduct of foreign policy. This is a fascinating, often startling account.? ----Frank Friedel, Harvard University
