The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953

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

The nearly eight years of Harry Trumans presidencyamong the most turbulent in American historywere marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic bomb and the development of far deadlier weapons; the start of the Cold War and the creation of the NATO alliance; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight a costly limited war 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 ones fellow citizens and fought for a national health insurance plan. While he was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans and came to support stronger civil rights laws, he never 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 instinct and combativeness, as when he asserted a presidents untested power to seize the nations steel mills.

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 intimate (The Washington Post) portrait of a man, born in the 19th century, who set the nation on a course that reverberates in the 21st century, a leader who never lost a schoolboys love for his country and its Constitution.

Reviews

Frank gives us this ebullient, bookish, often cantankerous man in full... Frank does not so much puncture the Truman myth as let out just enough air to settle the man back to earth.The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

.thoughtfully explores the unlikely triumph of one of the nations most consequential presidencies. Franks prowess as a storyteller brings to life the major episodes of Trumans tenure while drawing an intimate portrait of his internal struggles as he clashed with foreign and domestic rivals and led a group of heavyweights that came to establish a winning blueprint for the Cold War. The Washington Post

"[Franks] revisionism is meant to illuminate, not debunk; he believes that a more realistic account of Trumans limits will lead to a deeper appreciation of his greatness. . With a new kind of Cold War heating up and the foibles of our chief executives an ever more intense matter of scrutiny and concern, [the] book is timely in ways he couldnt have imagined when he started it. rigorously researched, thought-provoking and, not least, a pleasure to read." Frank Gannon, The Wall Street Journal

"Frank is a brave writer for having taken on a subject that historian David McCullough had handled so exhaustively inTruman,his 1992 Pulitzer Prizewinning biography of the 33rd president. So it is a pleasure to report that Franks courage is to be applauded, since he has written a remarkably engaging narrative of what Harry Truman was like as president and the challenges he faced. Truman had a more eventful presidency than most occupants of the Oval Office have had, and Frank views the man and his virtues and flaws with an acute empathy that never slips into sugary sentimentality. Nothing tested Truman as much as the Korean War did, and what Dwight Eisenhower, his successor, wrote at the time bears a sobering truth: 'If his wisdom could only equal his good intent!! Air Mail

"Movingly depicted... Frank has made a case for a man who, when given the responsibility of the entire country, was able to thread many needles, based on personal confidence, trust in the right people, and healthy relationships with family and friends." The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Frank is drawn to the human side of this story: the backroom sniping, the jockeying for position, the personality clashes, and the diplomatic pageantry that produced the postwar world order. [He] recognizes a precious gift to the biographer: a subject who, miraculously and generously, takes the time to write down his innermost feelings and thoughts For all the things that happened during Trumans Presidency, Frank argues, the events that were averted deserve to be part of the historical discussion, too. Above all, the world did not descend into a nuclear-armed ThirdWorld War, a prospect that loomed over every minute of Trumans Presidency and pervades every page of Franks book." Beverly Gage, The New Yorker

"Truman made his mark not just in the organization-building that helped transform the global order. He also broke political norms. Where and why he did is worth revisiting during a post-Trump period when Americans are reexamining the guardrails meant to guide public life and presidential powerand when the future of the countrys political parties seems more fraught than ever." John Dickerson, The Atlantic
" Just terrificwith a perfect tone, and a perfect understanding of Truman's strengths and shortcomings. Frank has managed this with emphases on sociology, culture, and a profound and deep understanding of the human struggle. Bob Woodward

"Franks talent as a novelist is on display here. With this refreshing and much needed reexamination of Truman's life, Frank establishes himself as a source of value to any reader interested in mid-twentieth century America." Richard Lawrence Miller, author of Truman: The Rise to PowerandLincoln and His World

Aremarkable window into America's great Cold War president. Because Frank is such a sublime writer, his heroic recounting of theTrumanpresidency is dazzling. This is intellectualbiography at its absolute finest." Douglas Brinkley is theKatherineTsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University and author ofAmerican Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race

Franks lively account of Trumans time in office evokes a pivotal time with vivid, carefully-gleaned detail. And its an appropriate book for this political moment, when a lot of us are hoping that an ordinary man will turn out to be an extraordinary president. Adam Hochschild, author of ten books, includingRebel Cinderella

"A fresh, deeply human perspective... Franks sensitive, empathetic portrait gave me a new appreciation for this innately decent, caring man, who, for all his stumbles, was committed to making a better world for those who lived in it." Lynne Olson, New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Madame Fourcade's Secret War

"Pitch-perfect. clear-eyed, wise, and compassionatein a word, humane. Jeffrey Franks lovely book lets us see up close how Harry Trumans decisions, sometimes considered, sometimes not, laid the foundation for the kind of world power the United States is today." Louis Menand, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Free World and The Metaphysical Club

"Massively researched, engagingly written An intimate, revealing history of a time, and of a president, whose straightforward persona masked a more complicated, sometimes tortured man during a truly extraordinary period. Robert L. Messer, author of The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman and the Origins of the Cold War

An intimate, vivid portrait of our 33rd president and his times. a chance to rediscover one of the most improbable and compelling figures in American history. Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming.

Author Bio

Jeffrey Frank was a senior editor atThe New Yorker, the deputy editor ofTheWashington Posts Outlook section, and is the author ofIke and Dick. He has published four novels, among them the Washington TrilogyThe Columnist,Bad Publicity, andTrudy Hopedaleand is the coauthor, with Diana Crone Frank, of a new translation of Hans Christian Andersen stories, which won the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Prize. He is a contributor toThe New Yorker, and has written forThe New York Times,The Washington Post,The Wall Street Journal,The Guardian,Bookforum, andVogue, among other publications.