Imprint: Doubleday
Published: 08/02/2018
ISBN: 9780857523662
Length: 448 Pages
Dimensions: 240mm x 39mm x 162mm
Weight: 742g
RRP: £20.00
The remarkable story of President Harry Truman's first four months in office when this unlikely, small-town, Washington outsider had to take on Germany, Japan, Stalin and the atomic bomb, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance - one of the most extraordinary challenges in American presidential history.
Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who find themselves facing extraordinary circumstances and, through courage and a dash of luck, cement their place in history. Chosen as President Roosevelt's fourth term Vice President for his admired work ethic, good judgement and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man from small-town America. That is, until he was thrust in over his head following the sudden death of Roosevelt.
With the world still caught up in the inferno of the Second World War, Truman found himself playing the roles of both judge and jury during the founding of the UN, the Potsdam Conference, the Manhattan Project, the German surrender, the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the decision to drop the Bomb and bring the war to the end.
Tightly focused, meticulously researched and drawing on documentation not available to previous biographers, The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during this tumultuous, history-making four months - when the stakes were high and the challenges even higher . . .
Imprint: Doubleday
Published: 08/02/2018
ISBN: 9780857523662
Length: 448 Pages
Dimensions: 240mm x 39mm x 162mm
Weight: 742g
RRP: £20.00
The story of Truman’s accession to the presidency is worthy of a Hollywood melodrama, and A J Baime’s zippy, well-judged and hugely readable book more than does it justice . . . although there are plenty of good biographies of Truman, few are as entertaining as Baime’s.
Intimate and absorbing, A.J. Baime's biography uses new sources to paint Harry Truman as a complex and thoroughly American figure. A sharply-drawn portrait of an era as well as a man.
A.J. Baime is a master. His reporting and storytelling are woven to hypnotic effect. Opening the first page of The Accidental President is like pulling up a chair to Truman’s White House desk where we sit engrossed as world events unfold in the most intimate manner, titanic in scale. Baime brings us as close as we are likely to get to this completely surprising, quirky, wily, and transformational president. This is history and humanity in lush, vivid colour.
An entertaining new history of Truman’s first months in office . . . filled with events that are strikingly proportionate to what the Trump administration has weathered since January.
A fast-paced, well-detailed chronology of Truman's transformation from an official with little administrative responsibility into a politically astute and ultimately beloved leader . . . a warmly human portrait of an unlikely president.
A.J. Baime is a master storyteller, and The Accidental President contains everything a reader could ever want from a work of history: characters that jump off the page, tension that makes your pulse pound, and smooth, smart writing that makes you think. Amazing!