Wednesday book

I recently finished David McCullough's biography Truman. Many of you will remember McCullough as the fatherly narrator of Ken Burns' The Civil War series, and his contributions to many other PBS documentaries. Truman is truly a massive book, nearly 1000 over-sized pages of main text. But McCullough's style is interesting and easy to read. Perhaps there are too many details in the book for the casual reader, but it is entertaining and worth the effort.

Harry Truman was President of the United States when I was born and I was still quite young when he left office, so obviously I wouldn't have a lot of direct memories of him being President. In fact I don't have any. I have memories of things that happened when he was President, even political events. But none of Truman being President. I remember General MacArthur making his famous speech to Congress when Truman fired him. I saw "...Old soldiers never die. They just fade away..." live on TV. I remember bits of the Republican National Convention when Eisenhower was nominated to succeed Truman, and that Eisenhower's Republican challenger was Robert Taft of Ohio. ( very long )