Truman: The everyman president

Mr Frank does not so much puncture the Truman myth as let out just enough air to settle the man back to earth

The Trials of Harry S Truman:  The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953

Author: Jeffrey Frank

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Price: $32.50 

Pages: 528

In a happier and perhaps more democratic era, the belief prevailed that every American came equipped with such reserves of decency and good sense that each of us could make a pretty darned good president if we had to.

Though on eight occasions a president’s death has abruptly elevated his vice president, the myth of “the accidental president” enshrouds Harry Truman as it does none of the others. Franklin Roosevelt kept Truman in the dark about virtually everything before dying only