Jan Pottker

This is Jan Pottker’s ninth book. She is an investigatory writer who specializes in biographies that narrate authentic stories, based on skillful research, as she explores the contradictions between the popular perceptions of people and events versus the realities of what occurred. For this book, she interviewed members of Mr. Thomas’s family, his friends and the surgeons with whom he worked, and she has explored at more than a dozen medical archives to search out the truth.

She is an accomplished public speaker who has talked at such venues as the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, the National Archives and the Smithsonian Institution. She has been invited to talk about her books on 40 cruises, including the Cunard, Princess, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean lines. She has been featured on dozens of television shows, including Inside Edition, 60 Minutes and the History network, and has been a guest on many hundreds of radio programs.

Jan Pottker worked for thirty years as a research chief and policy analyst in the Office for Civil Rights, in both the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare and the U.S. Department of Education. Her positions allowed her to assist in alleviating discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex and disability in health care and education services. She has two Master’s degrees as well as a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Her writings have been published in three languages and were widely reviewed in the media, including in People magazine and the New York Time’s Sunday Book Review. Her most recent biography is Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her Daughter, Eleanor Roosevelt.

She is married and has two children and three grandchildren.