Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.36 AVERAGE
4.36 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Ah, Truman. My favorite president. Clearly, I was a little biased about the subject matter before reading this book, but even if I'd never heard of Truman, I would have been a fan by the end. It's a loooong book, filled with a lot of details (some might even consider minutiae). I loved that about Truman, though. Others have said this reads like a novel, and I agree. We're deep into Truman's POV, his world, his thoughts, his people, his feelings. I learned a lot about Truman but also about his environment at that time in history. I felt like I was there.
I listened to the audiobook, and the narration is wonderful. All in all a terrific reading experience.
I listened to the audiobook, and the narration is wonderful. All in all a terrific reading experience.
Damn, how did I end up listening to the abridged version of a bunch of these?
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Highly recommend. This is clearly a very sympathetic biography, but McCullough points out Truman’s errors and prejudices, making this a balanced biography. Compellingly written and extremely informative but, like most biographies of this length and detail, it’s only for those who are truly interested in real in-depth history which has been written for the general public (as opposed to histories written for other historians).
Too-notch biography of a President who was vastly underestimated and underappreciated in his time but whose reputation has grown with the passage of time.
Too-notch biography of a President who was vastly underestimated and underappreciated in his time but whose reputation has grown with the passage of time.
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Positives:
The author did a fantastic job of relating the man Truman to the reading audience, as well as giving a decent overall scope of who he was. This book is well known for its immense details, roughly 1000 pages of it.
Negatives:
This book did have problems, the first, being the lack of balance. I enjoy a biographer who can give a good picture of a person, the flaws and the strengths. I saw little of the former coming into this book. While I knew little of Truman going in, and while I admire him, the author was clearly very pro-Truman, with little balance. Truman is not the most favored president in history, for reasons dealing with the Korean War, his firing of MacArthur, all the like, still with the controversial atomic bombing. However, a man himself, his only real flaw, according to the author, was being an underdog, someone people underestimated. The author just didn't balance it tremendously. Another problem I had was the plot and pacing of the book. The first fifty pages is all boring, descriptions of farmland and extra stuff I slogged through. I don't condemn this book for being overly-detailed, as that was what I knew I was getting, but things were all over the place. In one section, the author spoke of Truman not willing to go up for re-election after 1952. Great, but then, doesn't do anything further, before proceeding to return to the Korean War, but bringing it up again twenty pages later. Random stuff sort of came up. While, it fit chronologically well, which I like, it did step out of place, often, with the author going from talking about an election, to the war years before, mismatching it sometimes. To go back to balance, the main focus, was obviously his presidency, however, little was touched on about WWII. A big war that the author touches on a bit, before going directly to Roosevelt's death.
The author did a fantastic job of relating the man Truman to the reading audience, as well as giving a decent overall scope of who he was. This book is well known for its immense details, roughly 1000 pages of it.
Negatives:
This book did have problems, the first, being the lack of balance. I enjoy a biographer who can give a good picture of a person, the flaws and the strengths. I saw little of the former coming into this book. While I knew little of Truman going in, and while I admire him, the author was clearly very pro-Truman, with little balance. Truman is not the most favored president in history, for reasons dealing with the Korean War, his firing of MacArthur, all the like, still with the controversial atomic bombing. However, a man himself, his only real flaw, according to the author, was being an underdog, someone people underestimated. The author just didn't balance it tremendously. Another problem I had was the plot and pacing of the book. The first fifty pages is all boring, descriptions of farmland and extra stuff I slogged through. I don't condemn this book for being overly-detailed, as that was what I knew I was getting, but things were all over the place. In one section, the author spoke of Truman not willing to go up for re-election after 1952. Great, but then, doesn't do anything further, before proceeding to return to the Korean War, but bringing it up again twenty pages later. Random stuff sort of came up. While, it fit chronologically well, which I like, it did step out of place, often, with the author going from talking about an election, to the war years before, mismatching it sometimes. To go back to balance, the main focus, was obviously his presidency, however, little was touched on about WWII. A big war that the author touches on a bit, before going directly to Roosevelt's death.
Amazing recounting of the Truman years. I had not realized he was a very good president. He inherited Roosevelt's legacy and wrote his own.
This absolute bear of a book (eleven-hundred pages) is repeatedly described as one of the greatest presidential biographies ever written, and it may be, but maybe the genre just isn’t for me. This is the second in this genre I’ve read (John Adams - also McCullough - was the other). McCullough remains one of my favorite historical non-fiction authors and his writing is always good, but the subject matter at times made this book a chore to finish. To be clear: 3 stars, to me, is a good book…I.just reserve 4 and 5 star ratings for excellent books and the greatest books of their kind respectively.