Trials of Harry S. Truman

Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how so ordinary a man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century.

The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic weapon; the beginning of the Cold War; creation of the NATO alliance; the founding of the United Nations; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight in Korea.

Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens, and was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans. Yet while he supported stronger civil rights laws, he never quite relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of emotion, as when, in the aftermath of World War II, moved by the plight of refugees, he pushed to recognize the new state of Israel.

The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible, and deeply human, portrait of an ordinary man suddenly forced to shoulder extraordinary responsibilities, who never lost a schoolboy’s romantic love for his country, and its Constitution.

Reviews

"...looks with refreshing directness at both Truman’s strengths and weaknesses.. readers seeking an even-handed account of the major issues in his administration need look no further than this solid volume." — Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor

"An absorbing reexamination of [his] two-term presidency. … provides further depth and nuance to the character dynamics of Truman and his administration…..A well-researched, engagingly human portrait of this complex mid-20th-century political leader." — Kirkus Reviews 

"Frank astutely analyzes the geopolitics Truman confronted while conveying his character in elegant, evocative prose… The result is a discerning portrait of a president who achieved a lot just by muddling through." — Publishers Weekly

"[E]ngaging and insightful...In the first detailed account of the Harry Truman presidency in almost 30 years, Jeffrey Frank engagingly considers Truman’s most controversial decisions." — Bookpage

"Frank (novelist and former editor at The New Yorker and the Washington Post) crafts an expansive, appreciative review of a consequential, yet once-underestimated president."—Library Journal