He also raced through the United States Capitol retracing the path Truman ran when he was summoned to the White House after the death of Franklin D. He also lived in Truman's hometown Independence, Missouri for a little while. For instance, he would begin each day with a brisk early-morning walk, just as Harry S. In effort to better understand his subject, McCollough took several actions to emulate the life and activities of Truman. Harry Truman was a 19th-century man and I decided I would proceed as a great 19th-century biographer would, or as Dickens would.' But I didn't want to do anything tricky or fashionable because was neither of those things. McCullough explained his reasoning for this decision by stating: 'It's been very fashionable lately to begin biographies anywhere but at the beginning, heaven forbid. McCullough decided that he would structure the story of Truman's biography in chronological fashion. The challenge is to get the reader beyond thinking that things had to be the way they turned out and to see the range of possibilities of how it could have been otherwise.'Īfter writing Mornings on Horseback, which was McCullough's first biography and consisted of an in-depth look at a small period in the life of former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, McCullough wanted to do a more full biography, 'a mural instead of a Vermeer.' At first, McCullough attempted to write a biography about Pablo Picasso, but abandoned the project in favor of doing a book on Truman.

And just like us, they didn't know how it would all turn out. They were just as alive and full of ambition, fear, hope, all the emotions of life. The difference is that it was their present. But nobody ever lived in the past, only in the present. As soon as you say 'was,' it seems to fix an event in the past. Things could have gone any way at any point. 'Writing history or biography, you must remember that nothing was ever on a track. It follows his activities until death, exploring many of the major decisions he made as president, including his decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his meetings and confrontation with Joseph Stalin during the end of World War II, his decision to create the Marshall Plan, his decision to send troops to the Korean War, his decision to recognize the State of Israel, and his decision to desegregate the U.S. The book provides a biography of Harry Truman in chronological fashion from his birth to his rise to U.S. The book was later made into a movie with the same name by HBO.

The book won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Truman written by popular historian David McCullough. Truman is a 1992 biography of the 33rd President of the United States Harry S.

Truman book david mccullough