Man of the People: Life of Harry S. Truman

Harry Truman became an American icon after his death in 1972, but as Hamby (Beyond the New Deal) reminds us, he was widely discredited by the end of his second term in the White House: ``During the later years of his presidency, the public would increasingly see not his fundamental generosity or his great decisions, but his gaffes, pettiness, and unpredictability.'' Hamby's rich portrait reveals a man devoted to honesty and efficiency in public service, who excelled at building bipartisan coalitions, displayed an ability to make hard decisions and was ``magnificently right'' in his contributions to the early civil rights movement and to the mobilization of the West against the Soviet challenge. In Hamby's view, Truman personified the evolution of American social and political democracy in the first half of the 20th century. His biography vividly defines the man, both public and private. (Oct.)