Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman 1945-1948

Presidency of Harry S. Truman #1

by Robert John Donovan

Stated First Edition. A near fine copy in a very good dust jacket. The dust jacket's spine is faded and has tears at its head. Rubs to the corners. Tanning to the rear panel.

Genres: Biography, History, Us Presidents, Nonfiction, American History, Presidents, Politics

473 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Robert John Donovan was a Washington correspondent, author and presidential historian. Donovan attended Lafayette High School in Buffalo, New York, where he was Captain of the Hocke Herald Tribune after the war and served as a foreign correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief. During the latter period he was President of the White House Correspondents' Association. From the Tribune, he moved to the Los Angeles Times as Washington Bureau Chief and for a short time as Associate Editor in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[René · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the immediate period following WWII and the beginning of what became the Cold War. Truman was not expected to become President, nor was he prepared for it. We still live with some of his blunders (mainly, how supporting Israel was just playing dumb politics over the wise advise of the State Department). A bit too much time is spent reviewing minor figures in the US Congress and House of Representatives, but it remains a well-balanced biography. Now to tome 2, with the unexpected second term.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but McCullough's biography of Truman is much better.

[John Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an objective reading with good observations about Truman, a simple but honest politician who surrounded himself with cronies who by and large turned out to be poor political advisers. The book is a bit dense and written academically, covering a four-year period in over 400 pages.
Donovan points out that no leader before or since really had such a multitude of crises with which to contend: world war, subsequent Russian aggression that lead to the Cold War, communists taking over in China, communists ramping up for war in Korea, economic turbulence and starvation in Europe. On the home front, Truman had to contend with strikes from workers tired of deprivation during the war years and consumers angry about the unavailability of goods.
Truman was ill-prepared for the gigantic tasks before him, none more monumental than being kept in the dark about the development of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Yet rather than feeling overwhelmed, Truman stepped up to all the tasks facing him. He pressed for funding to feed starving masses and contain communism through the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. He put forward a comprehensive national health care plan. He supported the creation of Israel and civil rights (including ending discrimination in the armed forces) as humane causes when few saw them that way. Truman avoided war with the Soviets by persisting with the Berlin Airlift.
No one thought he would be elected in 1948, but his populism carried the day.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Truman presidency was one of the most consequential in American history, which makes it all the more shameful that I cannot like this volume more. Robert Donovan was an ace story teller, I once gave a talk in high school on his tale of John F. Kennedy in the Pacific, PT-109, yet here he shows neither a gift of yarn nor a historian's eye for judgment. Finishing out Franklin Roosevelt's fourth term, starting in 1945, Truman had to make the decision to drop the atom bomb on Japan, meet Stalin and Churchill, later Atlee, at Postdam to build a better post-war Europe, announce the Marshall Plan, put Churchill's anti-communist "Iron Curtain" speech, significantly delivered in Truman's hometown of Independence, Missouri, into practice with the Truman Doctrine, and at home deal with strikes, inflation, and a Republican-controlled Congress in 1946. Donovan devotes just one breezy chapter to how Truman's personal life and Missouri politics prepared him for the tough job ahead, with no sense of how Truman confronted a world of conflict unprecedented in American history. No American president, not even Wilson or Roosevelt, ever had to deal with simultaneous conflicts around the globe. The prose is clumsy too: "Why is Harry Truman running this morning to the Capitol? He could be running because..." Donovan was a great journalist and second-class historian.

[Martha Stiltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book didn't end the way I like a book to end. Still a good read.

[phillip e anderson]

Good easy rea