I’ve long regarded Iowa’s Jeff Taylor as one of the most interesting politicians in America – and that was before I knew that he had once died and come back to life.

Jeff, 65, is a political science professor at Dordt University and a two-term state senator from a rural district in northwest Iowa. He’s written books on Bob Dylan, William Jennings Bryan, the decentralist tradition in American politics and other worthy American subjects that are of no demonstrable interest to, say, Marco Rubio or Hakeem Jeffries. He is thoughtful, mild-mannered, affably learned and willing to make radical breaks with the corporate stooges of the Republican establishment. And now he has written a book about the day he died.

The driver turned off the siren and slowed down. The boy was dead for between 30 and 45 minutes

The driver turned off the siren and slowed down. The boy was dead for between 30 and 45 minutes

I’ve heard of politicians coming back from the dead – Richard Nixon after his 1962 loss in the California gubernatorial race comes to mind – but this is a resurrection of an altogether more literal sort.

In May 1965, when Jeff was four years old, he came down with what appeared to be a bad case of the flu. Bad turned to worse, and........

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