Truman Speaks

“Never has a President of the United States, or any head of state for that matter, been so totally revealed, so completely documented” (Robert A. Arthur). Plain Speaking is the bestselling book based on conversations between Merle Miller and the thirty-third President of the United States, Harry S. Truman. From these interviews, as well as others who knew him over the years, Miller transcribes Truman’s feisty takes on everything from his personal life, military service, and political career to the challenges he faced in taking the office during the final days of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. Using a series of taped discussions from 1962 that never aired on television, Plain Speaking takes an opportunity to deliver exactly how Mr. Truman felt about the presidency, and his thoughts in his later years on his accomplishments and the legacy he left behind. “The values of Plain Speaking, on the whole, are those of the highest form of political communication: the bull session. As with all good bull sessions, what is said here ranges widely in quality and seriousness, as one should expect when dealing with a complex man.” —The New York Times “Plain Speaking has a nostalgic, downhome quality of good friends gossiping over the back fence, or saying their piece of a twilight eve rocking on the porch—and if those fellas back in Washington have their secret machines running, well, they won’t like what they overhear. Not one little bit.” —Kirkus Reviews

Lectures and discussions held at Columbia University on April 27, 28, and 29, 1959.

Lectures and discussions held at Columbia University on April 27, 28, and 29, 1959.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America’s beloved and distinguished historian. The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.

During the atomic, earthshaking first 120 days of Harry Truman's unlikely presidency, an unprepared, small-town man had to take on Germany, Japan, Stalin, and a secret weapon of unimaginable power--marking the most dramatic rise to greatness in American history.

Prints three lectures given by President Harry S. Truman in 1959 about the federal government. The three lectures focus on the Presidency, the Constitution, and the menace of demagoguery to a democracy.

In his eight years as president from 1945-1953, Harry S. Truman made some of the most important decisions in U.S. history, particularly in foreign policy matters. This book contains transcripts of conversations with Truman from taped interviews in 1959. The probing questions and straightforward answers cover a wide variety of domestic and foreign policy issues ranging from civil rights in the South to using the atomic bomb on Japan. This book provides a vivid portrait of Truman, 'warts and all.' Through his answers to questions, the threads of his political loyalty, bluntness, frustration, decency, thrift, humanity, and humor become a tapestry of his presidential character. His intense pride and manner surface especially as he explains bitter political and domestic controversies, as well as foreign policy decisions. These interviews reveal Truman's bedrock foundation of deeply held political beliefs as he gives thoughtful answers to queries about major political issues. In addition, he discusses American presidential history; Congressmen such as Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson; Supreme Court Justices; and dozens of other well-known political leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy. In similar fashion, he describes numerous foreign leaders, including Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-Shek. Evident as well is his firm loyalty to the United States, his family, his friends, and the Democratic Party. Truman also divulges some of his personal dislikes, particularly of political opponents such as Richard M. Nixon and, for over a decade after 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower. However, his personal resentments are more than matched by his fair-minded judgments of former President Herbert Hoover, American farmers, laborers, and racial groups. Discovered by Ralph Weber at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, the interviews were originally to be used as background for Truman's book, Mr. Citizen (1960), but most of Truman's obs