This biography of Harry S. Truman covers his boyhood and youth in Independence, Missouri, his World War I artillery service in France, his rise through Kansas City's Pendergast political machine, his vice presidency and accession to the presidency on Roosevelt's death, and his presidency through the atomic bomb decision, the Marshall Plan, the 1948 campaign, the Korean War and firing of MacArthur, into his retirement in Independence and death, drawing on his diaries, letters, and interviews with associates.
Books mentioned in Truman (13)
Locksley Hall by Alfred Tennyson: “As a young man Harry copied down and saved the lines of this favorite poem, describing airships and wonders to come”
Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin: “"Harry liked Mark Twain and Franklin's Autobiography," read during long afternoons in the town library”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “Listed among the books kept in Truman's small bookcase in his later-life reading corner”
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens: “"I have been reading David Copperfield," and its line is used as a chapter epigraph”
Commentaries on the Gallic War by Julius Caesar: “Harry built a wooden model of Caesar's bridge over the Rhine "as described in Caesar's Commentaries" during his Latin studies”
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli: “In his diary at Blois, Truman writes that Catherine de Médicis and the Medici family believed in government by deviation as set out in The Prince by Machiavelli”
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare: “Harry wrote a senior-year school essay on the play, discussing Antonio and Shylock as an ideal man”
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck: “Acheson wrote that a fellow senator reminded him of the madam in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row”
The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham-Smith: “Acheson sent Truman a copy during his convalescence, an account of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade”
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer: “Named among the best-selling books of 1948 in a passage surveying the era's culture”
Roosevelt and Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood: “Named in the same 1948 best-seller passage”
Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Named in the same 1948 best-seller passage, described as Eisenhower's account of the war”
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred Kinsey: “Named in the same 1948 best-seller passage, whose statistical revelations concerning male promiscuity caused a sensation”