His ethical aspirations were constantly buffeted by the grim realities of entrenched power structures, fickle public opinions, wars of unprecedented scale, terrifying new technologies, and a rowdy media. I wish all people seeking life-long companionship could be as lucky as the Trumans.Īs far as his political career, Truman is proof that politics is a messy business. I’m sure the relationship wasn’t perfect (impossible!), but it added a feel-good element to the book that I wasn’t expecting but greatly appreciated. The story of Truman’s courtship and eventual marriage to Bess, his boyhood crush, is incredibly heart-warming. Surprisingly, Truman is also a wonderful tale of real-life romance. He kept his cool while making many of the hardest decisions that have ever barged into the oval office. He cared about the people on his staff and always treated them with professional affection and respect.

He made plenty of mistakes, but usually owned up to them. He knew and cared about the challenges faced by common Americans much more than the typical politician of his era, and consistently steered his political decision-making toward policies that he thought would serve the nation’s general welfare. I’ll do my best to distill my takeaways into a few brief paragraphs.įirst off, Truman seems to have genuinely been a “man of the people.” He came up as a farmer in Missouri, fought in World War I, struggled with finances pretty much his whole life, and didn’t have a fancy elite education. McCullough comes off as a relatively objective biographer, but at the same time he clearly adores Truman and wants to make him look good. Much of it felt like obligatory reading, but there were also moments that jumped out with the clarity and verve of a great novel. History buffs will feel right at home, but I can’t personally say that cracking it open was always an unalloyed pleasure. Truman is a text so teeming with detail that I often found it overwhelming. That task proved fairly easy to accomplish, and I also took away a few insights regarding how America’s recent past can inform its present. But the reason I picked up David McCullough’s Trumanwas far less grand: he is my mother’s favorite president and I wanted to find out why.

This observation is reason enough to investigate Truman’s life, a life that still echoes in our modern age. Truman in a 1954 letter to Dean Acheson, his former Secretary of State and dear friend. “The past has always interested me for use in the present.”

Truman mccullough book review