Product Description

This text presents an insight into the Truman presidency using newly available documents, memoirs and letters. It is based upon extensive research in the major primary sources as well as relevant printed material and combines journalistic technique and historical method.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1445348 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 473 pages

Customer Reviews

A Pivotal Period of History and a Pivotal Subject
While David McCullough's more recent biography of Harry Truman has received widespread recent attention, Robert J. Donovan's earlier biography published in 1977 has much to recommend it. Whereas McCullough's extensive volume covers Truman's entire life, Donovan zeroes in on the pivotal period of a pivotal presidency. Donovan begins as Truman takes over the awesome responsibility of the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death. Donovan covers in perceptive detail Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan as a means of ending World War Two. Donovan follows the war to its conclusion, and also focuses carefully on the exciting 1948 presidential campaign, when Truman scored one of the greatest upsets in American political history by defeating heavily favored Republican nominee Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

Donovan turns an astute eye as well on Truman's great foreign policy accomplishments of the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the creation of NATO. As a Middle East historian, I was benefitted by his thorough presentation of the controversy leading up to the granting of recognition to the new nation of Israel, and how Truman's decision was crafted.

I would urge that any dedicated Truman scholar should read both the McCullough and Donovan volumes. McCullough covers a wider perspective, while Donovan, on the other hand, gives broader coverage to the pivotal foreign policy events from 1945 to 1948, as well as Truman's sensational upset victory over Dewey.