Harry S. Truman : a life /

The second major biography of Harry S. Truman to appear in the last two years, Ferrell's book is the masterful culmination of lengthy research on the 33rd president, the capstone achievement of America's foremost Truman scholar. Ferrell's treatment is more critical of Truman and more analytical than that of David McCullough's Truman (1992). Ferrell finds Truman engaging, complex, a man of extraordinary talents. After an exacting account of Truman's farming, military, and business experience, financial dealings, family relations, stewardship with the Pendergast machine, and Senate career, Ferrell argues that Truman was well prepared to lead the nation. The author renders a mixed verdict on the Truman presidency. In foreign policy, Truman led the country into full participation in international affairs, handled relations with the Soviets competently, and managed nuclear policy ably, but made significant errors in Korea. At home, the bureaucracy posed more problems than the renowned 80th Congress. Truman offered remarkable leadership in civil rights, but failed to provide a presidential "beacon" in civil liberties. General readers through faculty. A. J. Dunar; University of Alabama in Huntsville

Ferrell, author or editor of eight previous books on Truman (Choosing Truman: The Democratic Convention of 1944) here presents a prodigiously researched and engrossing study of the 33rd president. Born and raised in Missouri, Truman (1884-1972) began his political career as a county judge backed by Kansas City's powerful Pendergast machine, which also supported his successful race for the U.S. Senate in 1934. A compromise candidate for vice president in November 1944, Truman became president five months later when Franklin Roosevelt died. Clearly an admirer, Ferrell presents his subject as an honest man of the people as well as a shrewd politician-not someone who just happened to be on the scene but a man who actively sought the presidency. He defends Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the quickest way to end WWII and details Truman's upset election victory of 1948 and his subsequent presidency, when the U.S. became involved in the Korean War. His description of Truman as a devoted husband and father agrees with earlier accounts. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

An estimable biography that portrays Truman, the patron saint of beleaguered pols, as an ordinary American but an extraordinary president. As narrative, this biography cannot begin to compete with David McCullough's Truman (1992). However, historian Ferrell (Indiana Univ., Bloomington; Ill-Advised, 1992, etc.) partly makes up for this with his mastery of Truman sources (he has written or edited eight previous books on the president) and his shrewd analysis of the workings of executive power. He shows how Truman, with his Missouri twang and his background as the product of Kansas City's Pendergast machine, seemed smaller than life, even grubby, compared to the patrician FDR. But he believes that Truman surpassed his predecessor in decisiveness, veracity, and stamina. Unpretentious and optimistic, Truman was temperamentally well equipped to lead the nation as it was being challenged by communism abroad. Yet Truman, now one of our most beloved presidents, saw his approval rating dip to only 23% a year before he left office--one point lower than Richard Nixon's when he resigned. Ferrell attributes this at least partly to depleted energy, but other factors may have come into play, such as his loyalty to corrupt cronies, a GOP congressional bloc that saw the opportunity to gain political capital by Red-baiting, and his method of dealing solely with a few congressional leaders. Ferrell's portrait differs significantly in only two ways from the current wisdom: He portrays a president who thought more deeply, both before and long after the fact, about the ramifications of dropping the atomic bomb than he is generally given credit for; and he makes a bigger issue of Truman's addition of his wife, Bess, to his senatorial payroll (an ethical lapse that he feared would doom his chances for the vice presidency in 1944). An incisive study of a gutsy underdog who rose to the occasion.