Word: truman
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...deal with publisher Mark Twain to write the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, a two-volume set that is still considered one of the best presidential memoirs ever penned. In 1913, Theodore Roosevelt wrote another well-regarded tome (predictably, and straightforwardly, titled Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography). Harry Truman wrote his memoirs because he was broke, Herbert Hoover produced his in an attempt to improve his Depression-tarnished image, and it's been sort of downhill ever since, culminating in Bill Clinton's 1,000-plus page apologia My Life. (See pictures of Presidents giving State of the Union addresses...
Each of Roosevelt's next two Inaugurations featured a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest. Then in 1949, Rabbi Samuel Thurman from Harry Truman's home state of Missouri joined a Baptist pastor and Catholic priest to deliver a prayer at the Inauguration. This was right around the time when sociologist Will Herberg was working on a book called Protestant, Catholic, Jew, arguing that the three religious traditions had separately shaped mid-20th-century America. It seemed both natural and fair, especially in the wake of the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel, to make sure that...
...dispute it. Several Presidents, including George W. Bush, were sworn in on the Washington Bible, a 10-lb. volume belonging to a New York Freemasons' society. John Quincy Adams, to keep a barrier between church and state, was sworn in on a book of U.S. laws. Harry S Truman used two Bibles in 1949--one, a gift from friends; the other, the one he used in his 1945 Inauguration. No matter what book or how many, an oath is an oath: the swearer is officially considered President from that moment...
...Blair House nearly became the site of national tragedy when two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Harry S. Truman, who was staying there while the White House was being renovated. One of the men was arrested, the other was killed during a shoot-out with police. Truman remained at Blair House despite the attempt until the restorations were finished in 1952. (By 1982, however, workmen had started in on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue after a chandelier collapsed in one of Blair House's 119 rooms...
...When the Obamas settle in, they'll be greeted by mementos and antiques that commemorate the nation's past - Robert E. Lee's signed resignation to Lincoln, the badge of the policeman who was killed saving Truman's life, the same portraits that hung in the sitting room where the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine were hammered out. Today it also contains furnishings and various bric-a-brac donated by House and Garden, General Electric, and Elizabeth Arden among others. During the Blair House's last facelift, Congress agreed only to pay for its structural improvements. For decorations and other...