The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

by A.J. Baime

He was awkward socially, he admitted. “It seems to me,” he wrote her, “that I never manage to say the proper thing in the proper place.”

ALWAYS DO RIGHT. THIS WILL GRATIFY SOME PEOPLE AND ASTONISH THE REST.

President Roosevelt was for the people, but Harry Truman is the people.”

Universities had contacted the White House staff offering honorary degrees to the president, who of course had no college degree, and he turned these offers down politely because he did not believe he deserved them.

Americans felt leaderless when Roosevelt died. Truman taught them, as one of them, that their greatness lies in themselves.”