Ignored by many, he got one good piece of advice from J. Hamilton Lewis, Democrat of Illinois. “Don’t start out with an inferiority complex,” Lewis said. “For the first six months you’ll wonder how you got here, and after that you’ll wonder how the rest of us got here.” On the morning of February 14, 1935, Harry Truman crossed the White House threshold for the first time. He walked through the front door and down a hallway past bored newspapermen fingering cigarettes. Franklin Roosevelt’s appointments secretary had written Truman’s name in the president’s calendar as “Sen. Thomas Truman” with
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