The Accidental President

A Focused Slice Biography

The attraction for me of this book is that it covers only the first four months of Harry S. Truman's presidency, a presidency he ascended to as Vice-president due to the death of FDR.

I've never studied history as much as I probably should have. Even so, I was aware of Hitler's suicide, Mussolini's death, the Potsdam meeting, the chartering of the UN, the liberation of Dachau, the end of WWII, the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the surrender of Japan.

What I was NOT aware or cognizant of was that all these events occurred during Truman's first four months of his presidency! An unbelievable number of earth-shattering and world-changing events all during four months of one man's service as president of the U.S.

Certainly Truman's birth, early life, and life before and after his presidency is covered in passing, but it is those first four months this book deals with in detail, relying upon official transcripts, notes from diaries, eyewitness testimony and official records to lay out Truman's first 120 days in office and all the challenges he faced.

And that is the attraction of this book. It is not a lifelong look at a man's life as most biographies are. It is rather a focused observation of a relatively short span of time that is filled with events that touched lives around the world under the administration of one man; Harry S. Truman.