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Review: Truman

History is not my strong-suit. Like the stereotypical “STEM” student, I opted out of the humanities whenever possible and doubled down on math. I’ve been trying to balance that out in recent years, though. Thanks to works like All the Sha’s Men and Stamped from the Beginning, I’ve come to recognize Harry S. Truman as a real class act. I’ve wanted to understand him on his own terms, though, especially when it comes to the use of the atomic bomb–a decision which I considered to be the most difficult ever made by a US President 1.

That’s how this computer programmer found himself browsing Goodreads for a biography on Truman. As for why I chose a 1,000 page tome, well, that’s a mix of perfectionism and ambition. Truman is the biography on the 33rd President, evidenced by its critical acclaim and its receipt of the Pulitzer Prize. Still, I was intimidated. Imagine: a thousand pages with nary a flow diagram or space ship to speak of!

In fact, I was enthralled by the entire thing. Here’s why.

It’s extraordinarily well-researched, for starters. From the enlisted men in Truman’s battery during World War I 2, to the nurse who delivered his daughter 3, it feels like McCullough gives a voice to everyone who crossed the man’s path. It helps that throughout Truman’s life, he was prolific and sincere in correspondence with his family and in his personal journal. (McCullough wisely notes that this remained true, “even after it was clear that he was to be a figure in history.”) Naturally, Truman was surrounded by influential people while in office, affording McCullough the luxury of two (sometimes even three 4) perspectives on many exchanges. That’s not to say McCullough had his job done for him; he labors to explain subtext–sometimes literal subtext 5. He even includes meta-analysis, explaining how other scholars have misinterpreted Truman (and not always in his defense).

Beyond that, McCullough is an excellent storyteller. His occasional use of foreshadowing 6 demonstrates his deeper appreciation for irony. He shows us how Truman the farmer had “a sneakin’ notion that some day maybe I’d amount to something.” And how Truman the soldier dreamed, “Maybe have a little politics and some nice little dinner parties occasionally just for good measure.” And how Truman the failed businessman tried politics despite his shortcomings because, “I’ve got it eat.” These details give a cinematic quality to the man’s life. In that sense, McCullough serves more like an editor than a director, sometimes forgoing strict chronology in favor of emotional impact 7. Though he really doesn’t have to work so hard to tug at your heartstrings 8 9. When the situation calls for it, he can also drop in to a more dramatic narrative style, as when Truman learned of FDR’s passing 10, or when he narrowly avoided assassination 11.

You might be crying “foul” at this point in the review. What I’ve called, “dramatic narrative style,” could easily be taken as dramatization or even sensationalism. These more thriller-like sequences are rare and (to my mind) justified, but then again, I might not be the best judge. I found myself getting caught up in the more idyllic scenes. For instance, McCullough almost channels Bradbury in his depiction of Independence 12. It’s harmless enough for a biographer to have warm feelings for Midwestern life, but it makes you wonder about the tint of his glasses. And that’s crucial when it comes to the subjects that matter.

McCullough’s respect for Truman sometimes borders on adoration, as in the inclusion of seemingly-irrelevant praise 13 or exaggerated depictions of adroitness 14. And while he doesn’t hide Truman’s faults, he kind of gives Truman a pass on a couple inconsistencies: his cronyism versus his hatred of graft and his racism versus his work on civil rights. Even Harry’s temper, while documented, isn’t really called out as such.

Them’s fightin’ words, I know. Besides mendacity, bias is probably the most serious complaint you can bring against a historian. I don’t want to oversell this criticism. These are small grievances relative to the size of the work. Besides, as a self-described history class delinquent, my bullshit detector is suspect. The folks at Columbia University certainly have a better one; they don’t hand out the Pulitzer to just anybody. So while my appreciation for the book was tempered by a desire to get a second historian’s perspective, that’s only natural for any work that strives to explain the world beyond objective fact. And there’s no way I would have made it through even 100 pages of a book like that.

  1. One of the book’s major surprises for me was how confident Truman was in his decision, even in his well-documented private life, until the day he died. Where I read an undercurrent of tragedy in his early life (a child growing up with this terrible decision waiting in his future), the A-bomb was not among Truman’s biggest challenges. Still don’t know how to feel about that. ↩︎

  2. “And then we gave Captain Truman the Bronx cheer, that’s a fact,” said Vere Leigh.)

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  3. Her arrival changed the entire atmosphere of the family. For Harry, on the verge of forty, life had new meaning. Nurse Kinnaman remembered his devotion to the child was both remarkable and instantaneous.

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  4. I told him I did not like the way in which I had been left in the dark about the Moscow conference. I told him that, as President, I intended to know what progress we were making and what we were doing in foreign negotiations. I said that it was shocking that a communiqué should be issued in Washington announcing a foreign-policy development of major importance that I had never heard of. I said I would not tolerate a repetition of such conduct.

    Byrnes, however, would insist the conversation was entirely pleasant, and according to others on board, it was not so much Truman as Admiral Leahy who gave Byrnes a hard time. (Leahy, as was known, considered Byrnes “a horse’s ass.”) Dean Acheson, who was not present, but who developed an understanding of both Truman and Byrnes, later speculated that both their impressions were genuine; that Truman, in recalling such encounters, was inclined to exaggerate his “bark,” when in reality he was nearly always extremely considerate of the feelings of others; and that Byrnes, as a veteran of South Carolina politics, would never have taken as personal criticism Truman’s demand to be kept informed.

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  5. “Have you ever ‘played the races’ or speculated in any way?”

    To what extent the memory of Claude came rushing back can only be guessed, but here he hesitated, as is evident in the surviving document. He began to write something—there is the start of the down stroke of a letter—but thinking better of it apparently, he quickly repeated his ditto line. The answer was no once more, and it is the earliest known sign in his own hand that he was capable of telling less than the truth if the occasion warranted, capable of being quite human.

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  6. Had he or MacArthur died then or shortly after—had one of their planes gone down, or either succumbed to heart failure—their place in history and their record of achievement would have looked quite different from what would follow.

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  7. Truman, in announcing that the business of the conference was ended, said in all sincerity that he hoped the next meeting would be in Washington.

    “God willing,” exclaimed Stalin, invoking the deity for the first and only time. Then, in a conspicuously unusual tribute, Stalin commended Byrnes “who had worked harder perhaps than any of us… and worked very well.”

    There was much hand shaking around the table and wishes for good health and safe journey. As it turned out, Truman and Stalin were never to meet again. Potsdam was their first and only big power conference.

    In his private assessment, Stalin later told Nikita Khrushchev Truman was worthless.

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  8. Every new President had his “honeymoon” with Congress and the country, of course, but this, the feeling that Truman was “one of us,” was something more. The day of the speech the Trumans moved from their apartment to Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, to stay temporarily until Mrs. Roosevelt moved out. For several days, his Secret Service convoy keeping step, Truman walked briskly across the street to work at about eight o’clock every morning. Once a taxi slowed, the driver put his head out the window and called, “Good luck, Harry,” as if speaking for the whole country.

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  9. As so often before, the grueling business of a campaign seemed to restore and enliven him. He would be remembered rolling along at night in the dining room of the Ferdinand Magellan, eating fried chicken with his fingers, enjoying stories and “matching wits” with his staff, while every now and then in the darkness outside a lonely light flashed by. He would be remembered washing his socks in the bathroom sink in California and after a day of eight speeches from Ohio to upstate New York, sitting in a hotel in Buffalo playing the piano at 1:30 in the morning.

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  10. As Lewis Deschler later recounted, Truman lost all his color. “Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” he said, putting down the phone.

    He was wanted at the White House right away, he told the others. They must say nothing.

    He went out the door alone. Then he began to run, taking a different route. He kept to the ground floor this time, racing down a hall between a double line of bronze and marble Civil War generals […]

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  11. The rest of the house grew quiet. Bess and her mother had retired to another room. Downstairs, the front door stood open to the street, the screen door latched. On duty in the comparative cool of the front hall was Secret Service Agent Stuart Stout.

    “The house was so quiet, the day so close, it was a struggle to stay awake,” remembered the assistant head usher, J. B. West, who with head usher Howell Crim was in their small office just off the hall.

    Outside, three White House police were posted, all sweltering in winter uniforms. […]

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  12. Overall it was quite a handsome community. The primary streets were paved, clean, and shaded by large old elms and cottonwoods. People took pride in their gardens. On summer evenings, after dark, families sat visiting on front porches, their voices part of the night for anybody crossing the lawns between houses.

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  13. He never went out the door without his hat, as few gentlemen of the day ever would, and his hat was always worn straight on his head. “Straight, absolutely straight,” [Margaret Truman] remembered.

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  14. Harry Truman had an unusually retentive mind. He remembered people—names, personal interests, family connections. He remembered things he had read or learned in school long before, often bringing them into conversation in a way that amazed others. He remembered every kindness he had ever been shown, the help given in hard times, and particularly would he remember those who treated him well when he first arrived in Washington, at age fifty, knowing almost no one and entirely without experience as a legislator.

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