Volume 39, Number 13 · July 16, 1992
Made in the U.S.A.
By C. Vann Woodward
Truman
by David McCullough
Simon and Schuster, 1,117 pp., $30.00
The story of Harry Truman's life is full of enough improbabilities and paradoxes to put an edge on the dullest curiosity. Here was a figure of obscure rural origins from the remote reaches of Missouri, dogged by debt most years, and with no more formal education than local public schools provided. Suddenly thrust into this man's hands was more power over world events than had ever been entrusted to a human being—control over the destiny of nations and empires—and, conceivably, the fate of the species. As the first president to preside over the Pax Americana, he had the immediate duty to bring to an end wars on opposite sides of the globe. Thus he had to decide whether and when to use atomic bombs, how to keep them under civilian control, and whether to proceed with production of hydrogen bombs. His also was the chief responsibility for the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Point Four programs, NATO, the Berlin Airlift, the scarier phases of what he called the war of nerves with the Soviet Union, intervention in Korea, and the firing of General MacArthur for insubordination. On the domestic front it was Truman, not FDR, who first called for Medicare, sent the first meaningful civil rights program to Congress, and desegregated the American military.
Review, 6090 words
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