This warm biography of Harry Truman is both an historical evaluation of his presidency and a paean to the man's rock-solid American values. Truman was a compromise candidate for vice president, almost an accidental president after Roosevelt's death 12 weeks into his fourth term. Truman's stunning come-from-behind victory in the 1948 election showed how his personal qualities of integrity and straightforwardness were appreciated by ordinary Americans, perhaps, as McCullough notes, because he was one himself. His presidency was dominated by enormously controversial issues: he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, established anti-Communism as the bedrock of American foreign policy, and sent U.S. troops into the Korean War. In this winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, McCullough argues that history has validated most of Truman's war-time and Cold War decisions.

The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters -- Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson -- and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man -- a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined -- but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman's story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman's own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary "man from Missouri" who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.

PART ONE-SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER

1. Blue River Country

2. Model Boy

3. The Way of the Farmer

4. Soldier

PART Two-POLITICIAN

5. Try, Try Again

6. The Senator from Pendergast

7. Patriot

8. Numbered Days

PART THREE--TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY

9. The Moon, the Stars, and All the Planets

10. Summer of Decision

PART FOUR-MR. PRESIDENT

11. The Buck Stops Here

12. Turning Point

13. The Heat in the Kitchen

14. Fighting Chance

PART FIVE-WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

15. Iron Man

16. Commander in Chief

17. Final Days

PART SIX-BACK HOME

18. Citizen Truman

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SOURCE NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX