Historical
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Truman
The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America's beloved and distinguished historian.
The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters-Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson-and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man-a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined-but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman's story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman's own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary "man from Missouri" who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.
The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters-Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson-and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man-a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined-but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman's story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman's own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary "man from Missouri" who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.
Editorial Reviews
"Meticulously detailed, elegantly written, tightly constructed, rich in revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights. It is, as its subject demands, biography on the grand scale."
-- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"A warm, affectionate and thoroughly captivating biography....the most thorough account of Truman's life yet to appear. "
-- Alan Brinkley, The New York Times Book Review
"McCullough's marvelous feel for history is based on an appreciation of colorful tales and an insight into personalities. In this compelling saga of America's greatest common-man president, McCullough adds luster to an old-fashioned historical approach...the sweeping narrative, filled with telling details and an appreciation of the role individuals play in, shaping the world."
-- Walter Isaacson, Time
"Remarkable....you may open it at any point and instantly become fascinated, so easy, lucid, and energetic is the narrative and so absorbing the sequence of events."
-- The Economist
"McCullough is a master storyteller whose considerable narrative skills have been put to exquisite use in re-creating the life and times of America's 33rd president."
-- Robert Dallek, Los Angeles Times Book Review
-- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"A warm, affectionate and thoroughly captivating biography....the most thorough account of Truman's life yet to appear. "
-- Alan Brinkley, The New York Times Book Review
"McCullough's marvelous feel for history is based on an appreciation of colorful tales and an insight into personalities. In this compelling saga of America's greatest common-man president, McCullough adds luster to an old-fashioned historical approach...the sweeping narrative, filled with telling details and an appreciation of the role individuals play in, shaping the world."
-- Walter Isaacson, Time
"Remarkable....you may open it at any point and instantly become fascinated, so easy, lucid, and energetic is the narrative and so absorbing the sequence of events."
-- The Economist
"McCullough is a master storyteller whose considerable narrative skills have been put to exquisite use in re-creating the life and times of America's 33rd president."
-- Robert Dallek, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Readers Top Reviews
David JohnsonAndrewT
I consider Harry Truman to be one of the greatest Presidents of the 20th Century and this book fully does him justice. This is the President who ended WW2, started the UN, ordered the Marshall Plan, broke the Berlin Blockade, and responded to the Korean War. On the Civil Rights issue, he was the first President to argue for the cause and delivered a speech to black people at the Lincoln Memorial 15 or so years before Martin Luther King in 1963. He ended the segregation of the US Armed Forces in the teeth of opposition from 'Southern Democrats'.
R Helen
This is probably one of the best biographies I have ever read. McCullough is a fantastic writer and I feel I really got to know who Truman was and I enjoyed spending time with him, reading about his life. As the book came to a close, I can honestly say that I was sad to see him go. It reads quickly, you hardly notice how long it is. However, this is not a political biography but rather a personal one. We get to know Truman the man. If you are looking for a political history of Truman's presidency this isn't it. Truman was definitely one of America's greatest Presidents and he made some of the most momentous decisions, good and not so good, of the twentieth century. He was on the one hand, an honest, hard working American trying to do the right thing, yet was the product of a political machine, a system he believed in. Although he was always faithful to his friends, many of them were of dubious character. But I think that's what made him human. He tried to do what he always thought was best, what he believed in, even if it was not popular. For that you have to respect him, even if you disagree with his decisions. Five stars is not enough for this wonderful book!
Gerald Koh
There are a few things that a historical biography needs to be considered excellent, and this biography of Harry Truman, which was published almost 30 years ago at the time of writing, hits all those prerequisites emphatically. The writing is lucid, the attention to detail is astute and the historical imagination imbued in the text makes it all the more enlightening. Anyone who reads this with the proper sense of appreciation will not only become very clear of all the major details regarding Truman's life and political career, but also understand the historical significance of how he contributed to the world we live in right now. Seriously, it's difficult to put into words how magnificent a piece of historical scholarship this book by McCullough constitutes. No wonder hardly anyone has dared to approach the task of writing a Truman biography since then! And it also highlights what a magnificent intellectual and writer David McCullough is as well.
EBP72
One of the best books on presidents I have ever read. McCullough takes you through the life and times of Truman, from his birth through his death. Lots of focus and insight is placed on his decision to drop Atom Bombs on Japan. You'll come away having learned something about Truman you did not know before. Highly recommend for students of history, fans of Truman or fans of McCullough.
Jonathan W White
After finishing David McCollough’s legacy redefining tome of the 33rd U.S. President Harry Truman, it is easy to see why “Truman” is largely considered a masterpiece and the gold standard of Presidential biographies. Although an intimidating 992 pages long, McCollough’s work is so well written and meticulously researched, it makes for a great read. Harry S. Truman has been placed in the upper echelon of great American Presidents, and it’s easy to see why. Never has a President been unexpectedly thrown into the breach of the office with so many ominous decisions to make, yet seemingly so unprepared for the highest and most powerful office in the land. After been reluctantly selected to be Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President, Truman took the oath of office upon the death of FDR, the world was still at war, just 82 days into Roosevelt’s unprecedented fourth term. Upon learning of the President’s death, it is said Truman asked Eleanor Roosevelt if there was anything he could do for her; she replied, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now!" Truman’s rise to the Presidency is a great American story, which McCollough details vividly. The son of a Missouri farmer, which Harry himself became, Truman was truly a man of the people. Earnest, plain spoken, and hardworking, these were the characteristics that justly defined him. After serving as a Field Captain in World War 1, Harry returned to Independence, Missouri where he would marry his sweetheart Bess and become a haberdasher before he would find his calling in public service. After some aid from Kansas City Democratic Machine Boss Tom Pendergast, Truman would go on to become Jackson County Judge, an administrative position similar to that of a County Commissioner. Harry oversaw the County’s “Ten Year Plan”, which included the transformation of the county’s public works including updating the network of roads and a new county courthouse. He was elected the president of the Greater Kansas City Plan Association and made director of the National Conference of City Planning. As an urban planner myself, I found this to be great trivia! After serving 12 years as County Judge, Truman would go on to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934, again leveraging the aid of Boss Pendergast. Upon entering the Senate, he would be disregarded as “The Senator from Pendergast”. It was after being reelected to the Senate in 1940, where Truman would begin to make a name for himself, establishing the Truman Committee, charged with rooting out waste and war profiteering from the expansive war mobilization efforts of the Roosevelt Administration. It was during his time on this committee where Truman’s no nonsense and hard work allowed him to establish himself as worthy of a Vice Presidential candidate. Truman’s tenure as President is as consequential a...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Blue River Country
As an agricultural region, Missouri is not surpassed by any state in the Union. It is indeed the farmer's kingdom....
The History of Jackson County, Missouri, 1881
I
In the spring of 1841, when John Tyler was President, a Kentucky farmer named Solomon Young and his red-haired wife, Harriet Louisa Young, packed their belongings and with two small children started for the Far West. They had decided to stake their future on new land in the unseen, unfamiliar reaches of westernmost Missouri, which was then the "extreme frontier" of the United States.
They were part of a large migration out of Kentucky that had begun nearly twenty years before, inspired by accounts of a "New Eden" in farthest Missouri -- by reports sent back by Daniel Morgan Boone, the son of Daniel Boone and by the fact that in 1821 Missouri had come into the Union as a slave state. The earliest settlers included families named Boggs, Dailey, and Adair, McCoy, McClelland, Chiles, Pitcher, and Gregg, and by 1827 they had founded a courthouse town called Independence, pleasantly situated on high ground in Jackson County, in what was often spoken of as the Blue River country. Those who came afterward, at the time of Solomon and Harriet Louisa Young, were named Hickman, Holmes, and Ford, Davenport, McPherson, Mann, Noland, and Nolan, Freeman, Truman, Peacock, Shank, Wallace, and Whitset, and they numbered in the hundreds.
Nearly all were farmers, plain-mannered and plain-spoken, people with little formal education. Many of them were unlettered, even illiterate. They were not, however, poor or downtrodden, as sometimes pictured -- only by the material standards of later times could they be considered wanting -- and though none were wealthy, some, like red-haired Harriet Louisa, came from families of substantial means. She had said goodbye to a spacious Greek Revival house with wallpaper and milled woodwork, the Kentucky home of her elder brother and guardian, William Gregg, who owned numerous slaves and landholdings running to many hundreds of acres.
The great majority of these people were of Scotch-Irish descent. They were Baptists and they were Democrats, and like Thomas Jefferson they believed that those who labored in the earth were the chosen people of God. They saw themselves as the true Americans. Their idol was Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory of Tennessee, "One-man-with-courage-makes-amajority" Jackson, the first President from west of the Alleghenies, who was of their own Scotch-Irish stock. It was for him that Jackson County had been named, and like him they could be tough, courageous, blunt, touchy, narrow-minded, intolerant, and quarrelsome. And obstinate. "Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest I am hard to turn," was a line from an old Scotch-Irish prayer.
With their Bibles, farm tools, and rifles, their potent corn whiskey, their black slaves, they brought from Kentucky a hidebound loathing for taxes, Roman Catholics, and eastern ways. Their trust was in the Lord and common sense. That they and their forebears had survived at all in backwoods Kentucky -- or earlier in upland Virginia and the Carolinas -- was due primarily to "good, hard sense," as they said, and no end of hard work.
They were workers and they were loners, fiercely independent, fiercely loyal to their kind. And they were proudly prolific. David Dailey, recorded as the first man to break the prairie sod in Jackson County, came west with a wife and twelve sons, while Christopher Mann, who outlived everybody of that generation, had already produced with his Betsie seventeen sons and daughters and with a second marriage fathered eight more. (Years afterward, at age eighty-seven, this memorable Jackson County pioneer could claim he had never lost a tooth from decay and could still hold his breath for a minute and a half.) They believed in big families, they came from big families. Children were wealth for a farmer, as for a nation. President Tyler himself had eight children, and in another few years, at age fifty-four, following the death of his first wife, he would remarry and have seven more children, making a total of fifteen, a presidential record.
Solomon Young, who was one of eleven children, and his wife Harriet Louisa, one of thirteen, were from Shelby County, Kentucky, east of Louisville. And so was Nancy Tyler Holmes, a widow with ten children, who made the journey west to Missouri three or four years later, about 1845, once her sons had established themselves in Jackson County. Carrying a sack of tea cakes and her late h...
Blue River Country
As an agricultural region, Missouri is not surpassed by any state in the Union. It is indeed the farmer's kingdom....
The History of Jackson County, Missouri, 1881
I
In the spring of 1841, when John Tyler was President, a Kentucky farmer named Solomon Young and his red-haired wife, Harriet Louisa Young, packed their belongings and with two small children started for the Far West. They had decided to stake their future on new land in the unseen, unfamiliar reaches of westernmost Missouri, which was then the "extreme frontier" of the United States.
They were part of a large migration out of Kentucky that had begun nearly twenty years before, inspired by accounts of a "New Eden" in farthest Missouri -- by reports sent back by Daniel Morgan Boone, the son of Daniel Boone and by the fact that in 1821 Missouri had come into the Union as a slave state. The earliest settlers included families named Boggs, Dailey, and Adair, McCoy, McClelland, Chiles, Pitcher, and Gregg, and by 1827 they had founded a courthouse town called Independence, pleasantly situated on high ground in Jackson County, in what was often spoken of as the Blue River country. Those who came afterward, at the time of Solomon and Harriet Louisa Young, were named Hickman, Holmes, and Ford, Davenport, McPherson, Mann, Noland, and Nolan, Freeman, Truman, Peacock, Shank, Wallace, and Whitset, and they numbered in the hundreds.
Nearly all were farmers, plain-mannered and plain-spoken, people with little formal education. Many of them were unlettered, even illiterate. They were not, however, poor or downtrodden, as sometimes pictured -- only by the material standards of later times could they be considered wanting -- and though none were wealthy, some, like red-haired Harriet Louisa, came from families of substantial means. She had said goodbye to a spacious Greek Revival house with wallpaper and milled woodwork, the Kentucky home of her elder brother and guardian, William Gregg, who owned numerous slaves and landholdings running to many hundreds of acres.
The great majority of these people were of Scotch-Irish descent. They were Baptists and they were Democrats, and like Thomas Jefferson they believed that those who labored in the earth were the chosen people of God. They saw themselves as the true Americans. Their idol was Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory of Tennessee, "One-man-with-courage-makes-amajority" Jackson, the first President from west of the Alleghenies, who was of their own Scotch-Irish stock. It was for him that Jackson County had been named, and like him they could be tough, courageous, blunt, touchy, narrow-minded, intolerant, and quarrelsome. And obstinate. "Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest I am hard to turn," was a line from an old Scotch-Irish prayer.
With their Bibles, farm tools, and rifles, their potent corn whiskey, their black slaves, they brought from Kentucky a hidebound loathing for taxes, Roman Catholics, and eastern ways. Their trust was in the Lord and common sense. That they and their forebears had survived at all in backwoods Kentucky -- or earlier in upland Virginia and the Carolinas -- was due primarily to "good, hard sense," as they said, and no end of hard work.
They were workers and they were loners, fiercely independent, fiercely loyal to their kind. And they were proudly prolific. David Dailey, recorded as the first man to break the prairie sod in Jackson County, came west with a wife and twelve sons, while Christopher Mann, who outlived everybody of that generation, had already produced with his Betsie seventeen sons and daughters and with a second marriage fathered eight more. (Years afterward, at age eighty-seven, this memorable Jackson County pioneer could claim he had never lost a tooth from decay and could still hold his breath for a minute and a half.) They believed in big families, they came from big families. Children were wealth for a farmer, as for a nation. President Tyler himself had eight children, and in another few years, at age fifty-four, following the death of his first wife, he would remarry and have seven more children, making a total of fifteen, a presidential record.
Solomon Young, who was one of eleven children, and his wife Harriet Louisa, one of thirteen, were from Shelby County, Kentucky, east of Louisville. And so was Nancy Tyler Holmes, a widow with ten children, who made the journey west to Missouri three or four years later, about 1845, once her sons had established themselves in Jackson County. Carrying a sack of tea cakes and her late h...
