In this riveting collection, published for the first time,
we follow Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, two giants of the
post–World War II period, as they move from an official
relationship to one of candor, humor, and personal expression.
Together they were primarily responsible for the Marshall Plan and
NATO, among other world-shaping initiatives. And in these letters,
spanning the years from when both were newly out of office until
Acheson’s death at the age of seventy-eight, we find them sharing
the often surprising and always illuminating opinions, ideas, and
feelings that the strictures of their offices had previously kept
them from revealing.
Adapting easily to their private lives, they nonetheless felt a
powerful need to keep in touch as they viewed with dismay what they
considered to be the Eisenhower administration’s fumbling of
foreign affairs, the impact of Joseph McCarthy, John Foster
Dulles’s foreign policy, and the threat of massive nuclear
retaliation. Adlai Stevenson’s poor campaign of 1956, Eisenhower’s
second-term mishaps, family events, speaking engagements, and
Truman’s difficulties writing his memoirs are all fodder for their
conversations. In 1960 their skeptical stance toward John F.
Kennedy and his father''s influence turned them toward Lyndon
Johnson. After Kennedy won they discussed Acheson’s reluctant
involvement in the Cuban missile crisis, his missions to de Gaulle
and Prime Minister Macmillan, and the Allied position in
Berlin.
Unbuttoned, careless of language, unburdened by political
ambition or vanity, Truman and Acheson show their own characters
and loyalty to each other on every page. Truman, a Missouri farmer
with the unpolished but sharp intellect of the largely
self-educated man, clearly understands that in Acheson he has a
friend with a rare gift for providing unhesitant and truthful
counsel. Acheson, well-educated, urbane, and well-off, understands
which traits in Truman’s complex character to love and admire and
when to admonish, instruct, and tease him. Both men share a deep
and abiding patriotism, a quality that truly stands out in today’s
world.
A remarkable book that brings to light the very human side of two
of the most important statesmen of the twentieth century.
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