Bush read about Truman and his presidency while in office. He held to the old guidelines: work hard, do your best, speak the truth, assume no airs, trust in God, have no fear. As much as any president since Lincoln, he brought to the highest office the language and values of the common American people. He stood for common sense, common decency. From Truman I learned about how far decency, straight talk, cheerfulness, and grittiness can take you.Īmbitious by nature, he was never torn by ambition, never tried to appear as something he was not. The result is that you not only get a sense of Harry Truman the man, but you also learn an enormous amount about the period of history in which he led.īiographies of presidents are portraits of leadership. His characters become larger than life, he describes historical scenes with gripping detail, and he interweaves just the right amount of subjective analysis with objective facts and events.

At over 1,000 pages, it is a complete examination of Harry Truman’s life and presidency, including blow-by-blow accounts of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the pivotal meetings with Churchill and Stalin at the finish of WWII, the Marshall Plan, the decision to send troops into the Korean War, his improbable re-election in 1948, and the crafting of America’s anti-communist foreign policy.

David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Harry Truman is one of the best books I’ve read in 2009.

Truman mccullough