2 comments about Harry S. Truman (American Presidents Reference Series).

1. This is a book for the middle/ high school age student. It is a photobiography, so it is packed with images and great information in a friendly format. I learned a lot as a teacher about Harry S, Truman from this book and I suspect that other teachers and there students will to. Great book and highly recommended.



2. This was required reading for a graduate course in American history. In this engaging biography, Robert H. Ferrell, who has authored and edited eight previous books on Truman, does an admirable job of presenting the life and presidency of Harry S. Truman. Although one can detect Ferrell's admiration for Truman, one senses from the extensive notes, bibliography, and research conducted at the Truman Library as well as his willingness to criticize Truman for his mistakes, that Ferrell has written a very balanced biography of Truman. Ferrell's book is a good introductory biography of Truman's whole life; the first eight chapters are devoted to his life prior to his ascendancy to the presidency in 1945 after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One gets the sense that Truman was the last president of an earlier and simpler time in America. He was the last president who was not a college graduate nor was he well--off financially. Ferrell's biography captures the essence of what type of a man Truman was and what history and his fellow citizens perceived him as.
   "A plain-speaking, straight-talking, ordinary fellow (people thought) who did what he saw as his duty without turning his obligation into opportunity for personal gain" (179). Ferrell also exposed Truman's flaws such as being overprotective and too loyal to friends that had done wrong. Often he took it as a personal affront when anyone differed with him.
   Ferrell presents a few experiences from Truman's early years that formed his character. From farming, Truman gained a work ethic that served him well throughout his life. His experience as an artillery captain and battery commander during WWI was instrumental in proving to himself and others that he was a very capable and caring leader of men. This experience was instrumental in putting him on the path of a political life. His experience as a failed haberdasher and bank speculator in the 1920's caused Truman to be a fiscal conservative the rest of his life and a good steward of the government's money. In addition, he learned about and came to understand and respect ethnic minorities, such as Catholics and Jews, from his Army and haberdashery experiences. Thus, Ferrell astutely proved that understanding Truman's early life experiences are instrumental if one wants to properly analyze Truman's decision-making process in the domestic and foreign policy arena.
   "The Buck Stops Here" placard on Truman's desk has become legendary in presidential history. One of his secretaries of state, Dean Acheson, admired Truman for capably understanding the complexities of a situation and his willingness to make a hard decision without vacillating. Truman was adept at gathering all of the facts in a timely manner, listening to people's opinions and turning the options over in his mind, and then when he arrived at what he thought was the correct decision, he made it and stuck to his guns. Truman wound up making many important decisions that have affected America to this day such as, using nuclear weapons against Japan to end WWII, integrating the military in 1948, recognizing the state of Israel, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and involving American military forces in the Korean war.
   One of the first, most momentous, and most often debated decisions that Truman had to make as President was whether to use two atomic bombs against Japan to hasten the end of WWII. Ferrell and other historians have made a very convincing argument to support Truman's decision-making process to use nuclear weapons to end the war. The Japanese military, who effectively controlled their government, were fanatics in their prosecution of the war. The Japanese people had suffered through numerous fire bombings of their cities in the months leading up to the end of the war, in which hundreds of thousands of their citizens were killed. In addition, the military had lost many battles and virtually all of its island holdings in the Pacific, and yet the government was strengthening its homeland forces and preparing for invasion instead of seriously considering surrender. Ferrell, relying on information gathered by Edward J. Drea, who wrote about the American military intelligence estimate gathered in July of 1945 mainly through the deciphering of Japanese radio traffic, showed that up to 600,000 Japanese were being prepared to fight in the event of an American invasion. Even this estimate turned out to be too low, since after the war American intelligence learned that the Japanese actually had some 900,000 prepared to fight against the invasion. American military estimates of the cost of life in the event of an invasion of the Japanese home islands were at best sketchy, and many historians who have written against the use of atomic weapons have used the unreliability of the estimates as one of their examples why Truman was wrong to use the nuclear option. However, Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar in their book, Codename Downfall, which detailed the plan to invade Japan, wrote that Truman was presented with an estimate that showed that there could be 238,000 American casualties and possibly the same number of Japanese casualties. This information coupled with the very real evidence of how tenaciously the Japanese people had fought was no myth, and convinced Truman that dropping the bombs on Japan to end the war was the right decision. One only had to look at the horrific casualty figures for American battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa to name a few in order to understand just how fiercely the Japanese were capable of fighting. Ferrell aptly showed that Truman's decision has come under criticism throughout the years partly because of how he had stridently defended it and was so dismissive of the critics of his decision. "The president's critics, one suspects, were ready to accuse him because they did not admire other things he did or approved. They were critical because of his well-known decisiveness, which sometimes seemed offhanded" (214).
   Truman, almost by necessity and circumstance, was forced to alter America's foreign policy of isolationism to one of internationalism. Truman realized the Korean War left him in a predicament. If he did not defend South Korea in the wake of North Korea's attack, he then would acquiescence to the Communist North Koreans, and ultimately the Russians. By not defending South Korea, American prestige in Asia and the world would undoubtedly would be tarnished. Yet, if he did attack, he risked a world war with the Chinese and the Russians, and ultimately a nuclear war. In light of the Truman doctrine, and America's stance on communism, Truman decided to defend South Korea. It was a widely unpopular war, which ended in a stalemate. Yet, Ferrell entertains a notion that America did not become the world superpower after WW II, but rather during the Korean War because America intervened to defend a non-communist nation, in essence, America became the police and protection force for weaker non-communist countries in the face of communist aggression. Many historians would agree that the year 1945 and the history after irreversibly changed the world. The cold war, America's role in world affairs, and the question of nuclear weapons all contributed.
   Truman initially set about reorganizing the bureaucracy, conducting a complete overhaul of cabinet and staff. In addition to creating the Budget Bureau and the National Security Council, he created the Council of Economic Advisers, which he staffed it with both conservatives and liberals and regarded it as an advisory committee. Ferrell positively describes Truman's intellect, honesty, and integrity throughout the book but one of the places where it shines most brightly is in his civil rights efforts, which is rarely given the credit it deserves in historical accounts. Ferrell examines possible reasons behind Truman's change of heart on civil rights and concludes that much of his perspective came from his principled sense of fairness and his belief that the duty of the office of the President was to represent all Americans. The Truman-appointed Civil Rights Commission presented a frank report, entitled To Secure These Rights, with a ten-point agenda of civil rights reforms. Lacking congressional support, he turned to the power of executive orders to start the desegregation of the armed forces.
   His second administration was marred by scandals, including the Hoey Investigation, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue illegal activity, for which the president was criticized for failing to take appropriate action. Another one of Truman's domestic challenges, which cost him politically, was labor strikes. To avoid a steelworker strike, Truman invoked what he believed to be the inherent powers of the president to seize control of the mills and was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. As the 1952 election loomed, Truman bristled that the emerging Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, was distancing himself from Truman's administration. Although they reconciled and Truman even assisted with campaign speeches, it was to little avail. Eisenhower won 55 percent of the popular vote and Truman finished out his lame duck presidency.
   In his post-presidency years, Truman returned to Independence and his quiet life. He solicited donations to build a presidential library, which he donated to the federal government, a convention which later presidents have followed. Likewise, he refused endorsements and placement in corporate payrolls because he believed that accepting financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the office of President. As a result, Harry and Bess Truman lived out the remainder of their lives without the safety of financial savings. He established a precise daily routine at his library, which included writing copious amount of letters and receiving many visitors. Ever the politician, he remained connected with Washington life and accepted invitations to the White House in both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. In his final years, bothered with health problems, he took refuge in music and books. He died the day after Christmas, 1972 and was buried at his presidential library in Independence, with all the pomp and circumstance fitting a former President.
   
   Thus, Ferrell does a very convincing job of making one believe just how important and interesting it is to study Truman, especially since he was so very different from the presidents who had come before and after him.
   
   Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.

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2 comments about Fidel My Early Years.

1. This book consists of one lengthy speech that El Commandante favored students with at his alma matter, the University of Havanna law school in 1995, and a few long interviews, including his famous 1985 interview with the Brazilian priest, Frei Betto. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a very good introductory essay, with some personal reflection on his buddy Fidel.
   
   If you are a good right thinking American, you probably consider Fidel Castro an evil dictator, even though most Americans the polls show, favor a lifting of the embargo. Well whether you consider him a monster, a somewhat brutal benign dictator (as I do) or as a holy saint (as Fidel hints he thinks himself at some points in this collection), this book is a fine piece of literature. Fidel is a first rate storyteller, he evokes the images of his life in a simple and clear style and is able to impart to the reader the rather inspiring gusto and confidence with which he went about life in his early years.
   
   Cuba pre-1959 was a very wealthy country and put up some good numbers but most of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of an indiginous elite, significantly tied to American investors. Once the United States grabbed Cuba after 1898, much of the land was handed off cheaply to U.S. investors. Castro describes how his father was an extremely poor Spanish immigrant who arrived in Cuba in the late 1890's as a soldier in the Spanish army that was barbarically trying to repress the Cuban independence movement. His father, Angel, over the years managed by his own enterprize to eventually become a pretty successful landowner out in the sticks of Oriente Province. His mother, a native Cuban, also was extremely poor growing up. His father eventually came to employ a large number of workers in his sugar fields, including some Hatians. He grew up playing with the children of these workers and never was aware of any class distinctions between him and his mates, or so he says. The Haitians, Fidel says, he used socialise with in their mud and thatch dwellings. The workers lived an extremely hard and impoverished life, but these Hatians had the hardest lot of all.
   
   In the 1933 revolution against the dictator Machado, Hatian migrant workers were expelled on the ground that they were taking jobs away from Cubans. Included in this expulsion was the Hatian Consul General at Santiago De Cuba, a mulatto who became Fidel's godfather. As a four, five or six year old Fidel spent some time during the Great Depression in Santiago, as a student in the home of an impoverished teacher and got his first taste of real poverty. The Great Depression years in Cuba made the same period in the U.S. look rather mild by comparison. Many people starved to death. When it set up its neocolonial rule over Cuba in 1902, the U.S. also set up a military contigent called the Rural Guards, which terrorized the peasants. Fidel reminisces how in the elections of 1940, when he was back home, he was assigned the task of visiting the homes of the illiterate workers around Angel's estate and others in the area, explaining to them how to vote for his step-brother as a parliamentary canidate for the Autentico party. The workers on estates ussually voted for whoever their boss told them to vote for. Fidel says he remembers the Rural Gurads terrorizing the peasant voters at the voting booth, making sure that the peasants understood that they had to vote in that election for Bautista and his associates.
   
   He spent his school years in various private Catholic institutions and had a few notable bouts with the authorities after he recieved physical punishment. He remarks that at one point he felt compelled to ask at of curiousity why there were no students of color at these institutions. People of color, of course, in Cuba before 1959, suffered Jim Crow style discrimination. At Jesuit schools in Santiago and Havanna, he, with no false modesty, describes that the priests were deeply impressed with his extraordinary gifts in intellectual fields as well as in sports. Just about everyone of these Jesuits had been a supporter of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, but nonetheless, he says, he grew close to many of them and deeply admired their austere spirit, their willingness to sacrafice for their students even though they didn't recieve any salary.
   
   His life took a dramatic turn when he entered the University of Havanna Law School in 1945 at the age of 19. In 1944, Ramon Grau San Martin, was elected President. Grau had been a leader in the short lived government of 1933 that tried to enact social democratic measures but was overthrown with U.S. backing by Bautista. Grau and his Autentico party had forgotten their revolutionary roots by this time and devoted the next eight years mainly to murdering their opponents and each other, and embezzling government money at a really astounding level. The Autenticos controlled the administration of the University of Havanna and used gang violence against their opposition. Fidel threw himself into this mess, gradualling setting himself up as the leading student opponent of the Autenticos. He describes one instance, when apparently his struggle with the Autentico gangsters had reached such a point that they were going to kill him if he kept opposing them, he went to the beach and cried. He resolved while he was thus wiping away the tears that he would go back to campus life and face whatever came his way. Actually I think that he probably used the connection of his father-in- law, the United Fruit company lawyer, Rafael Diaz Bilart, to fly to the United States, after there was a bounty on his head by some Autentico gangs for allegedly planning to kill one of their leaders. I'm not sure. Ann Louise Bardach's book "Cuba Confidential" is a really fine book that explores these matters about CAstro's life. Maybe this incident after the killing of the gang leader took place later, I can't remember. Certainly, the people who told such a story to Bardach had a motive to strech the truth.
   
   In any case, Fidel aligned himself with the most progressive forces in Cuban society. He joined the Orthodox party under the leadership of Eddie Chibas, and became the leader of that party's left wing. The Orthodox party wanted to eliminate the extreme corruption that had been an endemic part of Cuban life since 1902 and create a government that respected civil liberties, but it was in favor of keeping the capitalist system. Castro explains that he was really worried about the party because it was being co-opted by big landowners and being dilluted of its principles.
   
   Castro was a leader of the Havanna University organization in solidarity with opponents of the barbaric U.S. backed dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo. He joined a boat expedition in 1947 that aimed to land in the DR and start a guerilla war but the boat was stopped by the Cuban military as it went out to sea and its occupants were arrested but Castro jumped out the boat and swam to safety before they could get their hands on him. This expedition had been originally funded by the most corrupt minister in the Grau government, Julian Aleman, but some of the latter's rivals in the military called off the expedition after a couple of Autentico gangs massacred each other.
   
   Castro's description of his involvement in the mass uprising in Bogota, Colombia after the assasination of Jorge Gaitan in April 1948 is really extraordinary. He is a first rate story teller as I've said. What is probably most remarkable about this section is how Castro explains, with no false modesty, repeatedly that it was his own extraordary courage and selflessnes that got him through that difficult period, as he tried to organize the people. He led a detachment of revoltees and tried to encourage a mutinous police station, to go on the offensive. No doubt the murder of Gaitan played a role in convincing Castro as did the U.S. backed coup in Guatemala in 1954 for Che Cuevara, that one cannot affect social change for the poor without having the oligarchy or the CIA kill you. Castro had been in Bogota as the leader of a Pan Latin American conference which was supposed to serve as a forum for Latin American students to unite to oppose the British occupation of the Falklands, U.S. control of the Panamma Canal and Puerto Rico and other such banal nationalist issues.
   
   The idea that there is anything admirable whatsoever in Fidel Castro is likey incomprehensible to the average American, who rarely hears any notion in the corporate media that U.S. policy and U.S. foreign investors have served as a deciding factor in keeping the masses of Latin America in extreme poverty and misery. Few Americans, except those in Florida in a mostly positive way, have ever heard of Luis Posada Carilles or Orlando Bosch.
   
   This is a fine piece of literature.



2. Fidel Castro remains one of the dominant political figures of all time, certainly the most controversial and impactful political leader Latin America produced in the 20th century. The Cuban Revolution was an important moment in the history of the Americas, one can easily see it's influence in later movements such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Salvador Allende in Chile and in our own time Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. "Fidel: My Early Years" is a great collection of material where Castro himself discusses his youth from his childhood in Cuba to his student years up to the time right before the revolution. Political and history students must read this volume which gives a clear insight into the vast intellect and powerful speaking skills of Castro. Colombian Nobel-Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez opens the book with a wonderful essay where he describes his long-time friend and his eccentricities, sleepless working hours, voracious reading habits, passions, angers and hopes. Marquez with true eloquence captures a giant of revolutionary movements. Excerpts from major works such as "Fidel & Religion" are featured where Castro discusses his religious upbringing (mostly from his mother) and the poverty and suffering Cuba's campesinos and blacks suffered under U.S. imperialism. He also makes a point of supporting Haiti, which has also been ravaged by colonial abuse. There are fascinating moments such as Castro's discussions of his time in Colombia where he witnessed the political upheaval resulting from the assasination of the reformist Gaitan who Castro (and many others) suspect was assassinated in a plot hatched by Colombia's elites. The beauty of "Fidel My Early Years" is that we get a true human portrait of a man reduced to the level of slogans, cartoons and demonization by the American press, here we get his actual words and ideas. What we see is a man with an amazing capacity for recording facts, figures, thoughts, philosophies and a brilliant sense of calculation and observation and an appreciation for history. Fidel Castro has already left his imprint on Latin American and world history, but for many in the U.S. he remains a distant, threatening figure, here you get a chance at listening to the actual words because listening is a habit we really lack and very much need in the current world state.

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1 comments about The Lincoln Trail in Pennsylvania: A History and Guide.

1. A thoughtfully detailed and entertaining narrative with lots of captivating photos of the key people and places of Lincoln's visits to the Commonwealth. I also liked the appendix which provided guidance on how to follow and experience the Lincoln Trail. I'm not a Lincoln expert, so the accounts of his experiences here were new to me and fascinating to read... but that also means my rating is just a reflection of how much I liked this book, not a comparison to other books about Mr. Lincoln. It is unquestionably well-written.