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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
Very well written, easy read, and insightful. I actually learned several items about the end of WWII with respect to the alignment and position of global powers at that time.
Interesting
I really enjoyed thus book. Obviously full of history but the excerpts from personal diaries made this an intimate look into his life
I really enjoyed thus book. Obviously full of history but the excerpts from personal diaries made this an intimate look into his life
Arghh! There are history books and then there are History books. This is history the same way a slab of beef jerky, a swab of cotton candy, and 2-liter diet cola is a meal. The concept was interesting. Take just the first four months after FDR's death and concentrate on what his successor did with the aftermath. However... Start by renaming the first third of the book: The Death of FDR and What His Successor Did Before He Became President. Then start filling the book with lots and lots of details, many of which are mildly interesting at best, and downright useless at worst. Do we need to know exactly how Truman greeted people he met at particular times, such as, "Hi, how are you? I'm glad you're here"? Does anybody need to know the 2-digit phone number someone had on a ship from about 75 years ago, where both the ship and the person are long gone? When the author frequently says, "Someone said [ ]," is the reader just supposed to guess who it was or if it was one of his staff or one of the reporters or just the janitor happening by to pick up the trash? And did that "someone" represent just him or herself or everyone in the room or all mankind? There are blanket statements about the main subject that have no basis offered for why they were made or why they may be regarded by many experts as historically unjustified. Not a single comment about how racist someone's mother was? Name dropping throughout, but suddenly fail to do so on an important army commander that could be looked up in less than 5 minutes with a computer search engine. And then to top it all off, in the comments following the book, the author claims a disregard for his subject's legacy that he wanted to address, unfortunately a false premise. At least there's a Chamber of Commerce somewhere that loved this book, I'm sure. Good for tourism, no doubt. I'm embarrassed I read the whole thing. I will not be reading any other of this author's works, no matter how many award-winning movies get based on them. Luckily I'm purging the bad taste with a real history book at present.
A very solid read.
Harry Truman is retrospectively considered one of American’s greatest presidents due to the substance of decisions he made, the absurdity of his progress to the presidency, the theatrics of his re-election, and most importantly, because of the juxtaposition of his unshakable will and common man vulnerability. He never sought the presidency, would ever become president today, inherited the office from a giant, was woefully unprepared by the vice-presidency, and yet is remembered for being the right person at the right time who rose to the challenge.
Harry Truman was not a perfect person. (His wife was apparently a raging antisemite and his mother would have a confederate flag on her bumper today!) There’s a conversation going on in America today that we shouldn’t consider people in the period they existed, but should superimpose them on today’s standards, see how they’d measure up in 2020, and judge them harshly. Harry Truman would fail that test. Most would. And yet for his time, he was a forward thinker, a good human, and I’d take him today in a nanosecond.
This book, while promising to be laser focused on the first four months of his accidental presidency, does spend quite a bit of time on the decades leading up to 1945. It’s a conceit, for sure, and the promise wasn’t fully possible, but I learned quite a bit I didn’t know despite my interest in Truman. AJ Baime lays out an impressive, evidence-soaked argument for the mistakes and accomplishments of Harry Truman.
Highly recommended!
Harry Truman is retrospectively considered one of American’s greatest presidents due to the substance of decisions he made, the absurdity of his progress to the presidency, the theatrics of his re-election, and most importantly, because of the juxtaposition of his unshakable will and common man vulnerability. He never sought the presidency, would ever become president today, inherited the office from a giant, was woefully unprepared by the vice-presidency, and yet is remembered for being the right person at the right time who rose to the challenge.
Harry Truman was not a perfect person. (His wife was apparently a raging antisemite and his mother would have a confederate flag on her bumper today!) There’s a conversation going on in America today that we shouldn’t consider people in the period they existed, but should superimpose them on today’s standards, see how they’d measure up in 2020, and judge them harshly. Harry Truman would fail that test. Most would. And yet for his time, he was a forward thinker, a good human, and I’d take him today in a nanosecond.
This book, while promising to be laser focused on the first four months of his accidental presidency, does spend quite a bit of time on the decades leading up to 1945. It’s a conceit, for sure, and the promise wasn’t fully possible, but I learned quite a bit I didn’t know despite my interest in Truman. AJ Baime lays out an impressive, evidence-soaked argument for the mistakes and accomplishments of Harry Truman.
Highly recommended!
Better than I thought. I like how AJ painted the picture for Truman’s days in the White House
Fantastic!
I just had to read something about Harry Truman for my upcoming trip to Kansas City and a planned visit to the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri. This was the perfect book.
It is just so well written and the pains the author took to extract all the historical details from those crucial months after FDR died, are notable. Plus I really appreciated how the author kept restating frequently the roles and titles of Truman's advisors and other political figures from that time, almost every time they are mentioned. Otherwise, I would have never kept them all straight. Basically, this book tells all of Truman's story but delves more deeply into his first four months (and probably some of the most important months in American history). Since my dad would have very likely been part of a ground invasion of Japan I would have certainly been yelling "Give 'em hell Harry"...
A fascinating in depth look at one of our greatest leaders...
img src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tZY-jZkzfddk4TLuItxA6GZJLSZggk60/view?usp=sharing"
I just had to read something about Harry Truman for my upcoming trip to Kansas City and a planned visit to the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri. This was the perfect book.
It is just so well written and the pains the author took to extract all the historical details from those crucial months after FDR died, are notable. Plus I really appreciated how the author kept restating frequently the roles and titles of Truman's advisors and other political figures from that time, almost every time they are mentioned. Otherwise, I would have never kept them all straight. Basically, this book tells all of Truman's story but delves more deeply into his first four months (and probably some of the most important months in American history). Since my dad would have very likely been part of a ground invasion of Japan I would have certainly been yelling "Give 'em hell Harry"...
A fascinating in depth look at one of our greatest leaders...
img src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tZY-jZkzfddk4TLuItxA6GZJLSZggk60/view?usp=sharing"
Fascinating look at the man who had to step out of FDR’s shadows and what went down in his first four months.
informative
reflective
fast-paced
was borrowing this - had to return it before i could finish :((
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced