Truman (book)
First edition
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| Author | David McCullough |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | History/U.S. History |
| Published | June 15, 1992 Simon & Schuster |
| Pages | 1120 pages |
| ISBN | (paperback) (hardcover) |
| Preceded by | Brave Companions |
| Followed by | John Adams |
Truman is a 1992 biography of the 33rd President of the United States Harry S. Truman written by popular historian David McCullough. The book won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The book was later made into a movie with the same name by HBO.
The book provides a biography of Harry Truman in chronological fashion from his birth to his rise to U.S. senator, vice-president, president, following his activities until death, exploring many of the major decisions he made as president, including his decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his meetings and confrontation with Joseph Stalin during the end of World War II, his decision to create the Marshall Plan, his decision to send troops to the Korean War, his decision to recognize the state of Israel, and his decision to desegregate the United States armed forces.
"Writing history or biography, you must remember that nothing was ever on a track. Things could have gone any way at any point. As soon as you say 'was,' it seems to fix an event in the past. But nobody ever lived in the past, only in the present. The difference is that it was their present. They were just as alive and full of ambition, fear, hope, all the emotions of life. And just like us, they didn't know how it would all turn out. The challenge is to get the reader beyond thinking that things had to be the way they turned out and to see the range of possibilities of how it could have been otherwise."
- David McCullough
After writing Mornings on Horseback, which was McCullough's first biography and consisted of an in-depth look at a small period in the life of former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, McCullough wanted to do a more full biography, "a mural instead of a Vermeer." At one time, McCullough originally attempted to write a biography about Pablo Picasso, but later abandoned the project in favor of doing a book on Truman.
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