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99 reviews for:
The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World
A.J. Baime
4.37 AVERAGE
99 reviews for:
The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World
A.J. Baime
4.37 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
In his intro, Baime says he has a "new thesis" about Truman. As best as I can tell, his thesis follows in the next sentence: "the first four months of [Truman's] administration should rank as the most challenging and action-packed of any four month period in any American presidency." THIS IS NOT A THESIS. If a high school student of mine wrote this as a thesis, I would ask him or her just how we are going to prove that no American president at any time period in U.S. history did not have a more "challenging" or "action-packed" four months. Are we going to review over two hundred years of the American presidency in four month chunks? Are we going to define challenging in a more specific way? If we are, we should do so immediately, replacing challenging with "divisive" or "impactful on the Cold War" (awkward, but I'm not the author).
The important problem with this thesis isn't just that it's bad, it's that it yields a book that takes no stand on anything Truman did in those four months. After announcing that the four months are important, the author now feels that he can simply relay the content of the four months, mostly in order, with a quick couple of chapters in the beginning explaining how Truman became vice president how FDR died, and how much FDR kept Truman out of the loop.
I don't even necessarily disagree with the author that these months are not critically important. I LOVE the Potsdam Conference, especially after visiting Potsdam last year. I love the symbolism of lame-duck Prime Minister Churchill, scheming Stalin, and good old fashioned normal American farmer Truman speaking the Cold War into existence in the abandoned palace of a deposed German princess outside of a bombed-out Berlin. I loved his description of the 1944 Democratic Presidential Convention (Bernie supporters, go look up Henry Wallace if you really want to see the DNC rigging an election against a leftist who has the support of a majority of Democratic voters). I loved his description of the near-dictatorship (fine to describe it as benevolent, but it was a near-dictatorship) that FDR had created after 13 years as president.
However, the book would have been so much better if he made an actual argument using the raw material of these four months. Maybe the author could have defined Trumanism as a kind of center-right alternative to the center-left politics of FDR. Maybe he could have defined the hiring of James Byrnes as more significant than the dropping of the atomic bomb (which he seems to have had little control over). There are a lot of options, but creating an accidental thesis seems like a poor one.
The important problem with this thesis isn't just that it's bad, it's that it yields a book that takes no stand on anything Truman did in those four months. After announcing that the four months are important, the author now feels that he can simply relay the content of the four months, mostly in order, with a quick couple of chapters in the beginning explaining how Truman became vice president how FDR died, and how much FDR kept Truman out of the loop.
I don't even necessarily disagree with the author that these months are not critically important. I LOVE the Potsdam Conference, especially after visiting Potsdam last year. I love the symbolism of lame-duck Prime Minister Churchill, scheming Stalin, and good old fashioned normal American farmer Truman speaking the Cold War into existence in the abandoned palace of a deposed German princess outside of a bombed-out Berlin. I loved his description of the 1944 Democratic Presidential Convention (Bernie supporters, go look up Henry Wallace if you really want to see the DNC rigging an election against a leftist who has the support of a majority of Democratic voters). I loved his description of the near-dictatorship (fine to describe it as benevolent, but it was a near-dictatorship) that FDR had created after 13 years as president.
However, the book would have been so much better if he made an actual argument using the raw material of these four months. Maybe the author could have defined Trumanism as a kind of center-right alternative to the center-left politics of FDR. Maybe he could have defined the hiring of James Byrnes as more significant than the dropping of the atomic bomb (which he seems to have had little control over). There are a lot of options, but creating an accidental thesis seems like a poor one.
I wasn't expecting much from this one, so one could imagine my giddy surprise at the taught, well-dramatized events that defined Truman's crucial time as president. Having read McCullough's biography, this was a great addendum, with further analysis and perspectives on this epic four months.
A fantastic account of the fast-paced beginnings of Truman’s administration and all he had to deal with after FDR’s death. Really well done
informative
medium-paced
I picked up this book looking for something of substance to read. I appreciated reading about the Allied side of the war and how the country perceived Harry Truman. While he was not a favored president at the end of his term, he is one of the highly favored presidents now. I think it’s really amazing how knowledge and information can change minds and opinions.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
The Accidental President is a very well informed book. Although it can drag at times, the ending really sucked me in. From the Potsdam conference on, I found the book hard to put down.
4.5 stars. Harry Truman took over the presidency at arguably the most crucial time in history and FDR did zilch to prepare him to become president, even though FDR was in terrible health after his fourth election. He and VP Truman met two times in the 88 days between his inauguration and FDR's death in April of 1945. The war in Europe was coming to an end, but not ended. The war in the Pacific dragged on and invasion of Japan loomed large. The atom bomb wasn't yet functional, but was close to being so. There was a conference in San Francisco to establish the United Nations in two weeks (after the day FDR died), and there was a big meeting with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin coming up in Potsdam. And that was only the international agenda!
Some takeaways from the book:
1. Truman realized that he was the one who had to decide whether or not to drop the atom bomb on Japan and also realized that it was the worst choice any leader in history had to make up to that point. The sheer responsibility of it weighed heavily on him and rightly so. Even reading about this 70 years afterwards, you really feel for the guy.
2. When they tested the atom bomb in the New Mexico desert, one of the scientists who witnessed it said: "the war is over," and of course he was correct. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the making of the bomb, would write later in his memoirs that he thought of a statement from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become death." Truer words were never penned.
3. In 1944 at the Democratic convention, when they first polled delegates on who they wanted to be VP, Truman polled at 2%. Truman did not want to become the VP candidate and turned it down a few times before a personal call from FDR forced him to change his mind. The story of how he actually became the VP candidate is fascinating.
4. Truman's wife, Bess, did NOT want him to become President and was kind of upset when he did become President. The night that FDR died, Bess spent the night crying next to Truman in bed because she understood the difficulties that he would face and the cost to their family.
5. Few people at the time had any confidence that Truman would be a good president, he was really a huge unknown quantity.
6. Truman was devoted to his wife Bess throughout their lives and never strayed from that devotion. He was very impressive in his commitment to her.
A really good book. I very much enjoyed it.
Some takeaways from the book:
1. Truman realized that he was the one who had to decide whether or not to drop the atom bomb on Japan and also realized that it was the worst choice any leader in history had to make up to that point. The sheer responsibility of it weighed heavily on him and rightly so. Even reading about this 70 years afterwards, you really feel for the guy.
2. When they tested the atom bomb in the New Mexico desert, one of the scientists who witnessed it said: "the war is over," and of course he was correct. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the making of the bomb, would write later in his memoirs that he thought of a statement from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become death." Truer words were never penned.
3. In 1944 at the Democratic convention, when they first polled delegates on who they wanted to be VP, Truman polled at 2%. Truman did not want to become the VP candidate and turned it down a few times before a personal call from FDR forced him to change his mind. The story of how he actually became the VP candidate is fascinating.
4. Truman's wife, Bess, did NOT want him to become President and was kind of upset when he did become President. The night that FDR died, Bess spent the night crying next to Truman in bed because she understood the difficulties that he would face and the cost to their family.
5. Few people at the time had any confidence that Truman would be a good president, he was really a huge unknown quantity.
6. Truman was devoted to his wife Bess throughout their lives and never strayed from that devotion. He was very impressive in his commitment to her.
A really good book. I very much enjoyed it.
Read for bookclub. I'd never have picked this up on my own, but it was pretty interesting. There was a LOT I did not know (like Truman did not specifically order the second atomic bomb) and I'd had a somewhat negative view of Truman from the stuff I'd heard in the past--KKK, Pendergast machine, etc. But this book has changed my mind on some things. Very readable.
A Focused Slice Biography
The attraction for me of this book is that it covers only the first four months of Harry S. Truman's presidency, a presidency he ascended to as Vice-president due to the death of FDR.
I've never studied history as much as I probably should have. Even so, I was aware of Hitler's suicide, Mussolini's death, the Potsdam meeting, the chartering of the UN, the liberation of Dachau, the end of WWII, the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the surrender of Japan.
What I was NOT aware or cognizant of was that all these events occurred during Truman's first four months of his presidency! An unbelievable number of earth-shattering and world-changing events all during four months of one man's service as president of the U.S.
Certainly Truman's birth, early life, and life before and after his presidency is covered in passing, but it is those first four months this book deals with in detail, relying upon official transcripts, notes from diaries, eyewitness testimony and official records to lay out Truman's first 120 days in office and all the challenges he faced.
And that is the attraction of this book. It is not a lifelong look at a man's life as most biographies are. It is rather a focused observation of a relatively short span of time that is filled with events that touched lives around the world under the administration of one man; Harry S. Truman.
The attraction for me of this book is that it covers only the first four months of Harry S. Truman's presidency, a presidency he ascended to as Vice-president due to the death of FDR.
I've never studied history as much as I probably should have. Even so, I was aware of Hitler's suicide, Mussolini's death, the Potsdam meeting, the chartering of the UN, the liberation of Dachau, the end of WWII, the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the surrender of Japan.
What I was NOT aware or cognizant of was that all these events occurred during Truman's first four months of his presidency! An unbelievable number of earth-shattering and world-changing events all during four months of one man's service as president of the U.S.
Certainly Truman's birth, early life, and life before and after his presidency is covered in passing, but it is those first four months this book deals with in detail, relying upon official transcripts, notes from diaries, eyewitness testimony and official records to lay out Truman's first 120 days in office and all the challenges he faced.
And that is the attraction of this book. It is not a lifelong look at a man's life as most biographies are. It is rather a focused observation of a relatively short span of time that is filled with events that touched lives around the world under the administration of one man; Harry S. Truman.