Word: trumans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Miller, who conducted and edited the interviews, traces Truman's career, exploring with Truman and others the beginning of U.S. involvement in Korea, the Marshall Plan, the firing of General MacArthur, and the 1948 election campaign. Miller emphasizes Truman as an individual, his relationships with other important personalities, and his feelings about important decisions he had to make. It is this material which makes the book interesting. There is no new historical insight, nor is there any surprising or previously unpublished information of any significance. But just to have Truman say of Douglas MacArthur, "there are times when...
Unfortunately Plain Speaking is little more than such an exposure to Harry Truman's views on the major personalities and events of his time. Miller makes no real attempt to go beyond the anecdotes--interesting as they are--to work at some sort of psycho-historical interpretation. His admiration of Truman is so intense it approaches hero-worship. The result is that Miller's questions are largely set-ups, which fail to press Truman in the least, and merely afford the ex-President an opportunity to display his nobility of purpose and character...
...would seem that a book like this, made up of intimate interviews with a key figure, would provide a unique opportunity to explore crucial historical events: for example, in Truman's case, the decision to drop the bomb. Although Miller raises this subject, he does it ever so gently, in spite of the fact that he himself has written a book deploring the Hiroshima and Nagasaki massacres. He tells of proposing that Truman make a goodwill trip to Hiroshima seventeen years after the war. Truman's response was, "I'll go to Japan, if that's what you want...
...BOOK COMES complete with Miller's homespun philosophy: "We need more Presidents who have run from fights and admit it. We must run from more fights. That's our only hope." Plain Speaking could do with more probing of Truman's personality and less banal simplicity...
...Harry Truman who emerges from this book is an honest, well-intentioned, intelligent man with a great deal of insight into human character. Although somewhat limited by his background, as his continued references to "niggers" indicate, he had a solid progressive outlook on politics and on society. After learning in the past year of the way the executive branch has operated under President Nixon since 1969, it is a relief to read these interviews with Harry Truman--a down-to-earth man who did not get carried away by the grandeur and power of his office...