Word: mcculloughs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Roosevelt died in 1945, getting the fateful summons from the White House while drinking bourbon in Speaker Sam Rayburn's hideaway has been colorfully retold many times, most notably in Truman's own folksy memoirs and Robert Donovan's delightfully readable two-volume history of the Truman years. What McCullough provides -- as he did for Teddy Roosevelt in Mornings on Horseback and for the Panama Canal in The Path Between the Seas -- is a sense of historic sweep. The onset of the cold war, the Marshall Plan, the seizure of the steel mills, the Korean War and the sacking...
...McCullough's main weakness is one he shares with Truman: he occasionally fails to wrestle with the moral complexities of policy. Truman took justifiable pride in his feel for right and wrong, but he was an unreflective man at times, a proudly untroubled non-Hamlet...
Take, for example, Truman's crucial decision to allow the first and last wartime uses of the atom bomb. McCullough peremptorily dismisses the critics, saying that it was for Truman a simple judgment that use of the Bomb would eliminate the need to invade Japan and thus would, and did, save lives. That is probably true. But the juncture between personality and politics that is both interesting and troubling, though not so much to McCullough, is that Truman took this fateful step almost by default, with little agonizing or moral debate or formal consideration...
...were complex alternatives that could have been more fully considered by the President, such as issuing a clear warning to Japan that the U.S. had created an atomic weapon, perhaps combined with a demonstration detonation and a surrender ultimatum that made clear that Japan could retain its Emperor. Likewise McCullough skirts the tortured debate on "atomic diplomacy," reducing it to the question of whether the Bomb was dropped in part to frighten the Soviets and then quickly dismissing this theory without exploring the complexities of revisionist arguments over the causes of the cold...
Like Truman, McCullough has little use for academic theorizing; instead his marvelous feel for history is based on an appreciation of colorful tales and an insight into personalities. In this compelling saga of America's greatest common-man President, McCullough adds luster to an old-fashioned historical approach that is regaining respect: the sweeping narrative, filled with telling details and an appreciation of the role individuals play in shaping the world...