A 65-year-old Dordt University professor has published three academic books about politics, but his fourth book is about his own survival from a severe brain infection when he was four years old.
On May 28, 1965, Jeff Taylor was being transferred from Spencer for treatment in Sioux City. His mother and a nurse were in the ambulance. Taylor grew up being told about his illness and a miracle. “I died on the way and arrived D.O.A.,” Taylor said. “There wasn’t any big rush. They got me on the gurney, wheeled into the E.R. and the doctor was filling out the death certificate when the nurse noticed a little bit of movement under the white sheet that was covering me and that was at least at least 30, perhaps 45 minutes after my heart stopped.”
Taylor says the second half of the book focuses on his three-year search, as an adult, for the facts. “Can you document, can you prove a miracle?” Taylor asked.
Taylor obtained hospital records from 1965, tracked down witnesses and interviewed experts. His mother still lives in the same house in Spencer where he grew up — and where the book begins. “Obviously it’s sort of an interesting investigation on a logical level, but there is a significant emotional component to it as well,” Taylor said, “and hopefully readers will find it interesting for both of those reasons.”
The book, which was published in April 17, 2026, is titled “A Beautiful Day to Die: Memory, Evidence and the Question of a Miracle.” Taylor’s first book, “Where Did the Party Go?” about William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey and the Jeffersonian Legacy was published in 2006. His second was published in 2013 and titled “Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism.” His third book, “The Political World of Bob Dylan,” was published in 2015.
Taylor has served in the Iowa Senate since 2021 and has not announced whether he intends to seek reelection in 2028.
