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

by A.J. Baime

“To succeed financially,” Harry concluded, “a man can’t have any heart. To succeed politically he must be an egotist or a fool or a ward boss tool.”

Court by adding justices who would vote for his New Deal policies in 1937, a move that historians consider one of FDR’s most embarrassing mistakes.

The mansion’s main entrance came through the North Portico into a large lobby. Andrew Jackson had once kept a fourteen-hundred-pound wheel of cheddar cheese in this room—a gift from one of his supporters.

However, Stalin refused to make the announcement. He was getting reports that the Nazis were still fighting the Russians, and as it would turn out, these reports were true. So deep was the hatred between these armies, the Germans and Russians would not let go of the shooting war.

Merriman Smith of the United Press—one of the nation’s most revered Washington correspondents—tripped and fell to the floor, fracturing his arm.

Missouri’s own Mark Twain: ALWAYS DO RIGHT. THIS WILL GRATIFY SOME PEOPLE AND ASTONISH THE REST.

The president’s egalitarianism caught the White House staff off guard. Unlike the Roosevelts, who were accustomed to ignoring hovering servants, Truman insisted on addressing the kitchen staff by first name.

“First, because I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan

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

General Marshall spoke first, reiterating arguments he had already posed but now with more detail. The situation in Japan was “practically identical” to the situation in Europe before the Normandy invasion,