Research Catalog

Title

Man of the people : a life of Harry S. Truman / Alonzo L. Hamby.

Author

Hamby, Alonzo L.

Publication

New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xv, 760 p., [16] p. of plates : ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

Harry S. Truman is remembered today as an icon - the plain-speaking president, "Give 'em Hell Harry," the chief executive who put "The Buck Stops Here" on his desk. But Alonzo L. Hamby shows that there was more to Truman than the pugnacious fighter so prominent in popular memory. Insecure, ambitious, a man of honor, a partisan loyalist, an agrarian Jeffersonian Democrat who became a champion of big government, Truman was a complex figure who fought long and hard to triumph over his own weaknesses. In Man of the People, Hamby offers a gripping account of this distinctively American life, tracing Truman's remarkable rise from marginal farmer in rural Missouri to shaper of the postwar world. Truman comes alive in these pages as he has nowhere else, making his way from the farmhouse, to the front lines in France during World War I, to the difficult small-business world of Kansas City - all the time struggling with his deep feelings of inadequacy and immense ambition. Hamby also offers the best account yet of Truman's critical years in the Senate, covering not only his World War II probe of the defense program but also his neglected and revealing populist investigations of the railroads during the 1930s. He demonstrates that Truman was one of the most popular and respected members of the upper house. Hamby is particularly acute in his portrait of Truman's volatile presidency. He criticizes some aspects of the decision to use the atomic bombs against Japan but concludes that, considered in context, the act was understandable and justified. Providing new insight into the Cold War, he identifies the Turkish and Iranian crisis of 1946 as crucial turning points in Truman's attitudes toward the Soviet Union. Thoroughly covering Truman's struggle for "liberalism in a conservative age," Hamby also sheds great light on the president's Fair Deal domestic program.

Subject

• Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
• 1945-1953
• Presidents > United States > Biography
• United States > Politics and government > 1945-1953

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [643]-723) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. "I Was Kind of a Sissy": In Search of Self, 1884-1906 -- 2. "I Tried to Dig a Living Out of the Ground": J. A. Truman & Son, Farmers, 1906-1914 -- 3. "My Ship's Going to Come in Yet": Misadventures in Venture Capitalism, 1915-1917 -- 4. "Our Young Man Was a True Patriot": The Forge of War, 1917-1919 -- 5. "June 28, 1920 One Happy Year... June 28, 1922 Broke and in a Bad Way": Family, Fraternity, and Commerce in the 1920s -- 6. "I Became a Member of a Fighting County Court": The Darwinian World of Jackson County Politics, 1922 -- 7. "McElroy and I Ran the County Court and Took All the Jobs": Ideals and Realities, 1923-1924 -- 8. "Enough Left for a Living": Family, Business, Service, 1925-1934 -- 9. "Am I an Ethical Giant... Or Just a Crook?": Achievement and Doubt, 1926-1934 -- 10. "A Tremendous Amount of Strain": Crisis and Anxiety, 1931-1934 -- 11. "I Have Come to the Place Where All Men Strive to Be": Questing for the Heights, 1931-1934 -- 12. "Wisdom to Serve the People Acceptably": Life in the Senate, 1935-1940 -- 13. "Vultures at the Death of an Elephant": Insurgency, New Dealism, Interest Group Politics, and the Regulatory State, 1935-1940 -- 14. "I'm Going to Lick that Double-Crossing, Lying Governor": Struggle for Vindication, 1937-1940 -- 15. "We Saved the Taxpayers About Fifteen Billion Dollars": The Truman Committee, 1941-1944 -- 16. "Looks Like I've Arrived in the Senate": Statesman and Democratic Leader, 1941-1944 -- 17. "Bob, It's Truman. F.D.R.": The Vice Presidency, 1944-1945 -- 18. "I Feel Like I Have Been Struck by a Bolt of Lightning": Confronting the Presidency, 1945-1947 -- 19. "I Am Here to Make Decisions": Potsdam and Hiroshima, 1945 -- 20. "I'm Tired Babying the Soviets": The Cold War Emerges, 1945-1946 -- 21. "Being President Is Like Riding a Tiger": The Trials of Liberalism in a Conservative Age, 1945-1946.

ISBN

0195045467

LCCN

^^^94043806^

OCLC

• 31605426
• SCSB-10018332

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library