Truman and Pendergast

Truman and Pendergast PDF Author: Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826260500
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
No portion of the political career of Harry S. Truman was more fraught with drama than his early relationship with Thomas J. Pendergast. The two men met in 1927. Truman, who was then presiding judge of Jackson County, gave a $400000 road contract to a construction company in South Dakota, & Pendergast, the Boss of Kansas City, wasn't very happy about it: he had someone else in mind for the contract. Although their association began in disagreement, their common interest in politics was enough to establish a long-lasting relationship. In 1934, after turning down fourteen other contenders, the influential Pendergast sponsored Truman for the Senate. Although Truman had often cooperated with Pendergast on patronage issues, he had never involved himself in the illegalities that would eventually destroy the Pendergast machine. In fact, Truman had no idea how deeply the Boss had engaged in corruption in his personal affairs, as well as in managing the government of Kansas City. When the Boss was sent to Leavenworth for tax evasion in 1939, Truman was astonished. Despite Truman's honesty, his relationship with Pendergast almost caused his defeat during the Missouri senatorial primary in August 1940. The main challenger for Truman's Senate seat was the ambitious governor of Missouri, Lloyd C. Stark. In an effort to obtain the Senate seat, Stark set out to destroy Truman's sponsor, the Pendergast machine, & also denounced Truman as "the Pendergast senator." Behind the governor was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Stark sucessfully turned against Truman. Roosevelt needed Missouri's electoral votes to win his third term, & he believed that Stark could give them to him. Because of the stigma of Truman's Pendergast connection, the 1940 Democratic primary was the tightest election in his entire political career. He won by fewer than eight thousand votes. In Truman & Pendergast, Robert H. Ferrell masterfully presents Truman's struggle to maintain his Senate seat without the aid of Pendergast & despite Stark's enlistment of Roosevelt against him. Ferrell shows that Truman won the election in his typical fashion-going directly to the people & speaking honestly.

Truman and Pendergast

Truman and Pendergast PDF Author: Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826260500
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
No portion of the political career of Harry S. Truman was more fraught with drama than his early relationship with Thomas J. Pendergast. The two men met in 1927. Truman, who was then presiding judge of Jackson County, gave a $400000 road contract to a construction company in South Dakota, & Pendergast, the Boss of Kansas City, wasn't very happy about it: he had someone else in mind for the contract. Although their association began in disagreement, their common interest in politics was enough to establish a long-lasting relationship. In 1934, after turning down fourteen other contenders, the influential Pendergast sponsored Truman for the Senate. Although Truman had often cooperated with Pendergast on patronage issues, he had never involved himself in the illegalities that would eventually destroy the Pendergast machine. In fact, Truman had no idea how deeply the Boss had engaged in corruption in his personal affairs, as well as in managing the government of Kansas City. When the Boss was sent to Leavenworth for tax evasion in 1939, Truman was astonished. Despite Truman's honesty, his relationship with Pendergast almost caused his defeat during the Missouri senatorial primary in August 1940. The main challenger for Truman's Senate seat was the ambitious governor of Missouri, Lloyd C. Stark. In an effort to obtain the Senate seat, Stark set out to destroy Truman's sponsor, the Pendergast machine, & also denounced Truman as "the Pendergast senator." Behind the governor was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Stark sucessfully turned against Truman. Roosevelt needed Missouri's electoral votes to win his third term, & he believed that Stark could give them to him. Because of the stigma of Truman's Pendergast connection, the 1940 Democratic primary was the tightest election in his entire political career. He won by fewer than eight thousand votes. In Truman & Pendergast, Robert H. Ferrell masterfully presents Truman's struggle to maintain his Senate seat without the aid of Pendergast & despite Stark's enlistment of Roosevelt against him. Ferrell shows that Truman won the election in his typical fashion-going directly to the people & speaking honestly.

Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency

Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency PDF Author: Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN: 9780673393371
Category : Executive power
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A study of how Harry S. Truman ascended to the presidency and how he confronted the issues associated with bringing the office into the modern age.

The Trials of Harry S. Truman

The Trials of Harry S. Truman PDF Author: Jeffrey Frank
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501102907
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the “beguiling” (The New York Times) first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how a seemingly ordinary man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century. The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic bomb and the development of far deadlier weapons; the start of the Cold War and the creation of the NATO alliance; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight a costly “limited war” in Korea. Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens and fought for a national health insurance plan. While he was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans and came to support stronger civil rights laws, he never relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of instinct and combativeness, as when he asserted a president’s untested power to seize the nation’s steel mills. The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible and “intimate” (The Washington Post) portrait of a man, born in the 19th century, who set the nation on a course that reverberates in the 21st century, a leader who never lost a schoolboy’s love for his country and its Constitution.

The American President

The American President PDF Author: William E. Leuchtenburg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199721106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 903

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Book Description
The American President is an enthralling account of American presidential actions from the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 to Bill Clinton's last night in office in January 2001. William Leuchtenburg, one of the great presidential historians of the century, portrays each of the presidents in a chronicle sparkling with anecdote and wit. Leuchtenburg offers a nuanced assessment of their conduct in office, preoccupations, and temperament. His book presents countless moments of high drama: FDR hurling defiance at the "economic royalists" who exploited the poor; ratcheting tension for JFK as Soviet vessels approach an American naval blockade; a grievously wounded Reagan joking with nurses while fighting for his life. This book charts the enormous growth of presidential power from its lowly state in the late nineteenth century to the imperial presidency of the twentieth. That striking change was manifested both at home in periods of progressive reform and abroad, notably in two world wars, Vietnam, and the war on terror. Leuchtenburg sheds light on presidents battling with contradictory forces. Caught between maintaining their reputation and executing their goals, many practiced deceits that shape their image today. But he also reveals how the country's leaders pulled off magnificent achievements worthy of the nation's pride.

Intellectuals and the American Presidency

Intellectuals and the American Presidency PDF Author: Tevi Troy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742508255
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This book examines the contact relationships between U.S. presidents and America's intellectuals since 1960.

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure PDF Author: Matthew Algeo
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1569767076
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
From Missouri to New York and back again, this work chronicles the amazing road trip of a former president and his wife and their amusing, failed attempts to keep a low profile.

Truman

Truman PDF Author: David McCullough
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743260295
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1409

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America’s beloved and distinguished historian. 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.

Tumultuous Years

Tumultuous Years PDF Author: Robert J. Donovan
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826210852
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
"In January of 1949 the aftershocks of the Second World War were still jarring large parts of the globe, although they had greatly diminished in the United States. In Asia, however, turbulence continued to rise as a result of the collapse of Japan, the tottering of the European empires after the war, and the combustion produced by nationalism mixed with communism. Because a segment of American opinion, generally represented in the more conservative wing of the Republican party, was very sensitive to events in Asia, the tremors in the Far East came as harbingers of disturbing political conflict in the United States." Robert J. Donovan's Tumultuous Years presents a detailed account of Harry S. Truman's presidency from 1949-1953.

The Impossible Presidency

The Impossible Presidency PDF Author: Jeremi Suri
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
A bold new history of the American presidency, arguing that the successful presidents of the past created unrealistic expectations for every president since JFK, with enormously problematic implications for American politics In The Impossible Presidency, celebrated historian Jeremi Suri charts the rise and fall of the American presidency, from the limited role envisaged by the Founding Fathers to its current status as the most powerful job in the world. He argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success-the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it. As managers of the world's largest economy and military, contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There is little room left for bold vision. Suri traces America's disenchantment with our recent presidents to the inevitable mismatch between presidential promises and the structural limitations of the office. A masterful reassessment of presidential history, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand America's fraught political climate.

War and the American Presidency

War and the American Presidency PDF Author: Arthur Meier Schlesinger
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393346358
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
"Historical reflections that deftly challenge the political and ideological foundations of President Bush's foreign policy."--Charles A. Kupchan, New York Times In a book that brings a magisterial command of history to the most urgent of contemporary questions, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., explores the war in Iraq, the presidency, and the future of democracy. Describing unilateralism as "the oldest doctrine in American history," Schlesinger nevertheless warns of the dangers posed by the fatal turn in U.S. policy from deterrence and containment to preventive war. He writes powerfully about George W. Bush's expansion of presidential power, reminding us nevertheless of our country's distinguished legacy of patriotism through dissent in wartime. And in a new chapter written especially for the paperback edition, he examines the historical role of religion in American politics as a background for an assessment of Bush's faith-based presidency.