Truman Books

This book is too much fun. The success of the book (it is, of course a tremendously successful piece of writing)depends on the central character, Holly Golightly who charms not only the characters in the book but the reader as well. All of the action occurs in New York City, and the setting just enhances the plot (hence the title). The theme centers around parties, relationships and romance in a frivolous, somewhat flighty atmosphere. Capote's capacity for dialogue borders on genius. I suspect his near perfect recall for conversation helped create this character.

Just finished reading "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and let out a long sigh right after with a smile on my face. The ending may not necessarily be your typical happy-ending, nonetheless it is delightful. It was a re-read for me, for about like the 4th time and every time I have read it, I have found something different in it. While reading it this time I couldn't separate the movie from the book. Audrey and Peppard kept flashing in front of me as I was reading the book and it felt nice. As I type this so-called review I am listening to "Moon River" [instrumental] and watching Audrey in the opening credits. I love the book. According to me, no one can ever write a novella of such force [besides Marquez and Murakami] than that of Capote. As Norman Mailer said about it, "I wouldn't want to change any word of it. Its just perfect", that's exactly how I feel about it.

Breakfast at Tiffany's - if you already do not know what its about, may be because you haven't read it - the plot is simple: It is about lost dreams, sometimes unrequited love and a whole lot of wit, profundity and the chance to go the whatever length in order to get what one wants. It is about Holiday Golightly [love the play of words] and her life or rather a fragment of her life, as seen through the eyes of the narrator Paul. Paul who loves Holly like all the other men in her life. Holly, who is also an escort/call girl. A girl who is all of twenty and possesses the wisdom of a thirty-year old without losing her naivety. Who believes that one mustn't betray friends, no matter what. Who jumps into a cab and visits "Tiffany & Co." when she gets the `mean reds'. Holly is everything and more. She is promiscuous. She is brazen. She does things like stealing masks and as Billy Joel would put it, "She's always a woman to me"...

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella with many layers to it. Abandonment, loneliness, the need to belong and yet not be chained at the same time, the delight in the unorthodox and last but not the least about not loving a wild thing. As Holly says in the book, ""Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell...That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky"

The book was written by Capote at the peak of his career. The somewhat "curious" title Breakfast at Tiffany's was inspired by a man from out-of-town that Capote heard about, who was "ignorant of New York". When the man was asked to pick from the best restaurants in New York where to eat breakfast, he replied: "Well, let's have breakfast at Tiffany's," which was the only place he knew of.

Written in 1958, it portrays a world in which women were invariably best seen and not heard, and totally reliant on men for money and worldly comforts. And yet Capote has created a female character that is largely independent and emotionally strong, although she's vulnerable too (loneliness, depression and desperation are hinted at). While she might be having a lot of fun, she's also on the run from a past that is forever trying to catch up with her as she tries to find a place that makes her feel as happy as Tiffany's does.

All in all, this short novella is a joy to read. Capote's writing is typically rich and lyrical. He describes this woman in such a way that you get the sense he has moulded her on someone that intrigued him, that held some allure or had an aura of mysticism that left a deep impression.

This is an excellent book, but I have to take issue with its subtitle. By 1750 Calvinism was no longer a majority opinion in Geneva, at least, not the orthodox variety that had made Geneva synonomous with Calvinism. The ideas of the enlightenment had so thoroughly affected the Reformed movement that no conclusions can be drawn from Geneva's place as the capital of calvinism and the increase in suicides there.In fact, a very good case could be made for the opposite. Although a scion of the famous Turretin family was Geneva's leading theologian at the time, it was his watering down of his father and grandfather's calvinism that he was best known for. A better subtitle would have been "Suicide after the decline of Calvinism in Geneva".

Choosing Death: Suicide And Calvinism In Early Modern Geneva by Jeffrey R. Watt (Associate Professor in History, University of Mississippi) is a thorough, scholarly, deftly presented case study of the Republic of Geneva and its history of suicide. From views of the suicide in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that regarded self-destruction as the result of demonic possession, and that harshly appropriated the property of those who took their own lives, to the late eighteenth century turn of thought that recognized the role that mental illness and personal trauma often played in suicide. Choosing Death is a fascinating, informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking social history of an admittedly grim subject within the historical context of a proud and sovereign European nation.

Scott McCullar is perhaps the Gary Larson of library humor. What Larson did to dinosaurs and cows, McCullar has done to the overlooked world of libraries. Funny, inventive cartoons abound in this book. His clear, straightforward art helps showcase his inventive comedy writing. If you've ever worked in, or even checked out a book from, a library, you'll appreciate his demented, wry outlook.

These cartoons are hilarious and no library should be without a copy!

This book gives a thorough look at the transition and evolution of the Truman administration's foreign policy approach. I found it a surprisingly easy read for a book based on solid research. Though my exposure to other works dealing with this subject is admittedly narrow, I would highly recommend it to anyone seeking a balanced view on this subject.

The origin of the Cold War remains a hot topic, with several new books appearing each year revealing new information from previously sealed archives and basic research into private papers of major players in the Cold War. Having read a number of these studies, I would rate Wilson Miscamble's as one of the very best. His select bibliography alone list hundreds of sources, and his copious footnotes show that he used these references extensively. Indeed, some of his best material appears in the footnotes, all of which bear noting. Miscamble takes the reader from the day Truman was called to the White House to be told that FDR had died, through the trying first weeks of leading the nation through a deadly maze of challenges as World War II grinds to an end. Truman was placed in a bind by FDR, who had not even informed him of the work being done to develop the atomic bomb. Nor had Truman ever met Churchill or Stalin, with whom he would have to cooperate to defeat Hitler's forces, then concentrate on winning the war against Japan. The author shows the forces with which Truman had to deal at each stage of the War and in trying to shape a Postwar world: establishment of the United Nations, winding down Lend-Lease, formulating a means to meet the perceived threat of Soviet expansion and domination of Central and East Germany. Throughout, he shows Truman's weaknesses as well as his strengths, and although you may still have many questions about the Cold War when you finish this book, you are also likely to have a greatly enhanced appreciation of the roles played by the major players, especially with respect to Truman's role as the Cold War developed. This is an excellent book with which to study Cold War origins, and it will provide you with leads to further study if you care to pursue the topics it covers in greater detail.

This is a book for the middle/ high school age student. It is a photobiography, so it is packed with images and great information in a friendly format. I learned a lot as a teacher about Harry S, Truman from this book and I suspect that other teachers and there students will to. Great book and highly recommended.

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history. In this engaging biography, Robert H. Ferrell, who has authored and edited eight previous books on Truman, does an admirable job of presenting the life and presidency of Harry S. Truman. Although one can detect Ferrell's admiration for Truman, one senses from the extensive notes, bibliography, and research conducted at the Truman Library as well as his willingness to criticize Truman for his mistakes, that Ferrell has written a very balanced biography of Truman. Ferrell's book is a good introductory biography of Truman's whole life; the first eight chapters are devoted to his life prior to his ascendancy to the presidency in 1945 after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One gets the sense that Truman was the last president of an earlier and simpler time in America. He was the last president who was not a college graduate nor was he well--off financially. Ferrell's biography captures the essence of what type of a man Truman was and what history and his fellow citizens perceived him as.
"A plain-speaking, straight-talking, ordinary fellow (people thought) who did what he saw as his duty without turning his obligation into opportunity for personal gain" (179). Ferrell also exposed Truman's flaws such as being overprotective and too loyal to friends that had done wrong. Often he took it as a personal affront when anyone differed with him.
Ferrell presents a few experiences from Truman's early years that formed his character. From farming, Truman gained a work ethic that served him well throughout his life. His experience as an artillery captain and battery commander during WWI was instrumental in proving to himself and others that he was a very capable and caring leader of men. This experience was instrumental in putting him on the path of a political life. His experience as a failed haberdasher and bank speculator in the 1920's caused Truman to be a fiscal conservative the rest of his life and a good steward of the government's money. In addition, he learned about and came to understand and respect ethnic minorities, such as Catholics and Jews, from his Army and haberdashery experiences. Thus, Ferrell astutely proved that understanding Truman's early life experiences are instrumental if one wants to properly analyze Truman's decision-making process in the domestic and foreign policy arena.
"The Buck Stops Here" placard on Truman's desk has become legendary in presidential history. One of his secretaries of state, Dean Acheson, admired Truman for capably understanding the complexities of a situation and his willingness to make a hard decision without vacillating. Truman was adept at gathering all of the facts in a timely manner, listening to people's opinions and turning the options over in his mind, and then when he arrived at what he thought was the correct decision, he made it and stuck to his guns. Truman wound up making many important decisions that have affected America to this day such as, using nuclear weapons against Japan to end WWII, integrating the military in 1948, recognizing the state of Israel, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and involving American military forces in the Korean war.
One of the first, most momentous, and most often debated decisions that Truman had to make as President was whether to use two atomic bombs against Japan to hasten the end of WWII. Ferrell and other historians have made a very convincing argument to support Truman's decision-making process to use nuclear weapons to end the war. The Japanese military, who effectively controlled their government, were fanatics in their prosecution of the war. The Japanese people had suffered through numerous fire bombings of their cities in the months leading up to the end of the war, in which hundreds of thousands of their citizens were killed. In addition, the military had lost many battles and virtually all of its island holdings in the Pacific, and yet the government was strengthening its homeland forces and preparing for invasion instead of seriously considering surrender. Ferrell, relying on information gathered by Edward J. Drea, who wrote about the American military intelligence estimate gathered in July of 1945 mainly through the deciphering of Japanese radio traffic, showed that up to 600,000 Japanese were being prepared to fight in the event of an American invasion. Even this estimate turned out to be too low, since after the war American intelligence learned that the Japanese actually had some 900,000 prepared to fight against the invasion. American military estimates of the cost of life in the event of an invasion of the Japanese home islands were at best sketchy, and many historians who have written against the use of atomic weapons have used the unreliability of the estimates as one of their examples why Truman was wrong to use the nuclear option. However, Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar in their book, Codename Downfall, which detailed the plan to invade Japan, wrote that Truman was presented with an estimate that showed that there could be 238,000 American casualties and possibly the same number of Japanese casualties. This information coupled with the very real evidence of how tenaciously the Japanese people had fought was no myth, and convinced Truman that dropping the bombs on Japan to end the war was the right decision. One only had to look at the horrific casualty figures for American battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa to name a few in order to understand just how fiercely the Japanese were capable of fighting. Ferrell aptly showed that Truman's decision has come under criticism throughout the years partly because of how he had stridently defended it and was so dismissive of the critics of his decision. "The president's critics, one suspects, were ready to accuse him because they did not admire other things he did or approved. They were critical because of his well-known decisiveness, which sometimes seemed offhanded" (214).
Truman, almost by necessity and circumstance, was forced to alter America's foreign policy of isolationism to one of internationalism. Truman realized the Korean War left him in a predicament. If he did not defend South Korea in the wake of North Korea's attack, he then would acquiescence to the Communist North Koreans, and ultimately the Russians. By not defending South Korea, American prestige in Asia and the world would undoubtedly would be tarnished. Yet, if he did attack, he risked a world war with the Chinese and the Russians, and ultimately a nuclear war. In light of the Truman doctrine, and America's stance on communism, Truman decided to defend South Korea. It was a widely unpopular war, which ended in a stalemate. Yet, Ferrell entertains a notion that America did not become the world superpower after WW II, but rather during the Korean War because America intervened to defend a non-communist nation, in essence, America became the police and protection force for weaker non-communist countries in the face of communist aggression. Many historians would agree that the year 1945 and the history after irreversibly changed the world. The cold war, America's role in world affairs, and the question of nuclear weapons all contributed.
Truman initially set about reorganizing the bureaucracy, conducting a complete overhaul of cabinet and staff. In addition to creating the Budget Bureau and the National Security Council, he created the Council of Economic Advisers, which he staffed it with both conservatives and liberals and regarded it as an advisory committee. Ferrell positively describes Truman's intellect, honesty, and integrity throughout the book but one of the places where it shines most brightly is in his civil rights efforts, which is rarely given the credit it deserves in historical accounts. Ferrell examines possible reasons behind Truman's change of heart on civil rights and concludes that much of his perspective came from his principled sense of fairness and his belief that the duty of the office of the President was to represent all Americans. The Truman-appointed Civil Rights Commission presented a frank report, entitled To Secure These Rights, with a ten-point agenda of civil rights reforms. Lacking congressional support, he turned to the power of executive orders to start the desegregation of the armed forces.
His second administration was marred by scandals, including the Hoey Investigation, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue illegal activity, for which the president was criticized for failing to take appropriate action. Another one of Truman's domestic challenges, which cost him politically, was labor strikes. To avoid a steelworker strike, Truman invoked what he believed to be the inherent powers of the president to seize control of the mills and was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. As the 1952 election loomed, Truman bristled that the emerging Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, was distancing himself from Truman's administration. Although they reconciled and Truman even assisted with campaign speeches, it was to little avail. Eisenhower won 55 percent of the popular vote and Truman finished out his lame duck presidency.
In his post-presidency years, Truman returned to Independence and his quiet life. He solicited donations to build a presidential library, which he donated to the federal government, a convention which later presidents have followed. Likewise, he refused endorsements and placement in corporate payrolls because he believed that accepting financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the office of President. As a result, Harry and Bess Truman lived out the remainder of their lives without the safety of financial savings. He established a precise daily routine at his library, which included writing copious amount of letters and receiving many visitors. Ever the politician, he remained connected with Washington life and accepted invitations to the White House in both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. In his final years, bothered with health problems, he took refuge in music and books. He died the day after Christmas, 1972 and was buried at his presidential library in Independence, with all the pomp and circumstance fitting a former President.

Thus, Ferrell does a very convincing job of making one believe just how important and interesting it is to study Truman, especially since he was so very different from the presidents who had come before and after him.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history. In this engaging biography, Robert H. Ferrell, who has authored and edited eight previous books on Truman, does an admirable job of presenting the life and presidency of Harry S. Truman. Although one can detect Ferrell's admiration for Truman, one senses from the extensive notes, bibliography, and research conducted at the Truman Library as well as his willingness to criticize Truman for his mistakes, that Ferrell has written a very balanced biography of Truman. Ferrell's book is a good introductory biography of Truman's whole life; the first eight chapters are devoted to his life prior to his ascendancy to the presidency in 1945 after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One gets the sense that Truman was the last president of an earlier and simpler time in America. He was the last president who was not a college graduate nor was he well--off financially. Ferrell's biography captures the essence of what type of a man Truman was and what history and his fellow citizens perceived him as.
"A plain-speaking, straight-talking, ordinary fellow (people thought) who did what he saw as his duty without turning his obligation into opportunity for personal gain" (179). Ferrell also exposed Truman's flaws such as being overprotective and too loyal to friends that had done wrong. Often he took it as a personal affront when anyone differed with him.
Ferrell presents a few experiences from Truman's early years that formed his character. From farming, Truman gained a work ethic that served him well throughout his life. His experience as an artillery captain and battery commander during WWI was instrumental in proving to himself and others that he was a very capable and caring leader of men. This experience was instrumental in putting him on the path of a political life. His experience as a failed haberdasher and bank speculator in the 1920's caused Truman to be a fiscal conservative the rest of his life and a good steward of the government's money. In addition, he learned about and came to understand and respect ethnic minorities, such as Catholics and Jews, from his Army and haberdashery experiences. Thus, Ferrell astutely proved that understanding Truman's early life experiences are instrumental if one wants to properly analyze Truman's decision-making process in the domestic and foreign policy arena.
"The Buck Stops Here" placard on Truman's desk has become legendary in presidential history. One of his secretaries of state, Dean Acheson, admired Truman for capably understanding the complexities of a situation and his willingness to make a hard decision without vacillating. Truman was adept at gathering all of the facts in a timely manner, listening to people's opinions and turning the options over in his mind, and then when he arrived at what he thought was the correct decision, he made it and stuck to his guns. Truman wound up making many important decisions that have affected America to this day such as, using nuclear weapons against Japan to end WWII, integrating the military in 1948, recognizing the state of Israel, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and involving American military forces in the Korean war.
One of the first, most momentous, and most often debated decisions that Truman had to make as President was whether to use two atomic bombs against Japan to hasten the end of WWII. Ferrell and other historians have made a very convincing argument to support Truman's decision-making process to use nuclear weapons to end the war. The Japanese military, who effectively controlled their government, were fanatics in their prosecution of the war. The Japanese people had suffered through numerous fire bombings of their cities in the months leading up to the end of the war, in which hundreds of thousands of their citizens were killed. In addition, the military had lost many battles and virtually all of its island holdings in the Pacific, and yet the government was strengthening its homeland forces and preparing for invasion instead of seriously considering surrender. Ferrell, relying on information gathered by Edward J. Drea, who wrote about the American military intelligence estimate gathered in July of 1945 mainly through the deciphering of Japanese radio traffic, showed that up to 600,000 Japanese were being prepared to fight in the event of an American invasion. Even this estimate turned out to be too low, since after the war American intelligence learned that the Japanese actually had some 900,000 prepared to fight against the invasion. American military estimates of the cost of life in the event of an invasion of the Japanese home islands were at best sketchy, and many historians who have written against the use of atomic weapons have used the unreliability of the estimates as one of their examples why Truman was wrong to use the nuclear option. However, Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar in their book, Codename Downfall, which detailed the plan to invade Japan, wrote that Truman was presented with an estimate that showed that there could be 238,000 American casualties and possibly the same number of Japanese casualties. This information coupled with the very real evidence of how tenaciously the Japanese people had fought was no myth, and convinced Truman that dropping the bombs on Japan to end the war was the right decision. One only had to look at the horrific casualty figures for American battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa to name a few in order to understand just how fiercely the Japanese were capable of fighting. Ferrell aptly showed that Truman's decision has come under criticism throughout the years partly because of how he had stridently defended it and was so dismissive of the critics of his decision. "The president's critics, one suspects, were ready to accuse him because they did not admire other things he did or approved. They were critical because of his well-known decisiveness, which sometimes seemed offhanded" (214).

Thus, Ferrell does a very convincing job of making one believe just how important and interesting it is to study Truman, especially since he was so very different from the presidents who had come before and after him.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.

Revisionist history upsets me very much. I especially dislike revisionist history dealing with the ending of the Second World War and the Cold War. Somehow, despite all common sense, reality, and historical evidence there are people who believe, write and teach that Harry S. Truman had alternative motives when he ended WWII by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I am a big fan of Japanese history and culture. I love it. I have been to Japan two times. However, it can not be denied that Japan was not ready to surrender in August of 1945.

The Bottom line is this, Harry Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Second World War. He did it to end the war quickly. He did it to save American lives. He did it to save Japanese civilians.

Truman did not use the atomic bombs for nuclear diplomacy with the Russians. He did not use it because of racial biases. Fortunately this book, which is really a collection of documents sets the record straight.

Harry Truman was a great president. He was honest and he was not afraid to make tough decisions. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of those tough but neccessary decisions that Truman fortunately had the moral courage to make.

Historians and fans of history should look at this book and the documents discussed. Revisionists will unfortunately ignore the evidence and spread bad information. But in reality, this book helps set the record straight.

I really like the authors, they seem very well informed. I'd like to meet them sometime and discuss their thoughts! ;-)
-Matthew Best

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A young artist I know was telling me about his mother, bragging really, well I would too, if my mother had won the 2007 T S Eliot Prize. Dave couldn't remember what celebrated figure had loaned his name to the award. "Might be the F. Scott Fitzgerald Prize," he offered, his mouth filled with pizza and enthusiasm. It didn't take long to work out that his mother was Carol V. Davis and within a few days I had the book in my hands. Hands which are now forever Russian, thanks to Ms. Davis' unique alchemy and magical gifts.

I take it that Davis' own family heritage intrigued her enough to seek out employment in Russia, which can't have been easy! Her grandparents on one side hailed from St. Petersburg, and to that legendary city she finagled her entire family, three kids included, while she taught Jewish literature and also contemporary American literature and underwent the experiences she writes about in her book, INTO THE ARMS OF PUSHKIN. She starts with simple culture clash, sights, sounds and smells she never had in Los Angeles. Her kids had never even seen snow. A second theme grows out of the first, the way language mirrors and in fact precipitates the clash of nations. Language has its own economy, she discovers, and just as her children, "set adrift in the unknown," depend on her to buy food for the next day's meals, she finds herself--in a moving passage--laying out the words she will need for tomorrow, "laying them on the desk chair with the folded clothes."

Her aim, she insists, is "I want you to know what it is/ to live without language." She is a pilgrim of poetry, inventing herself and reinventing the long history of her grandmother, Anna, and Anna's foremothers before her, whom she may trace all the way back to original ancestors "at the time of Moses." Everything looks different there, even the colors and the lights. It is the season for hoarding. For the poet and her little dependents, "home" is now an equivocal place and she forgets the word for it in any language. In such a climate, deprived of so much of what passes for knowledge in America, other senses become bewilderingly vivid and life affirming. The pungency of pickles for example. Pickles are everywhere. Just as I was turning a page thinking to myself, "She's got pickles in every poem," I was taken aback by the title of a poem on the far side of the page, "Jars of Pickles, Jars of Beets."

At first I couldn't understand this emphasis on pickles. Then it came to me that they are the talisman of the book, almost an ark of the covenant, in the way the fermenting traps their flavors and keeps their central mystery alive for the future. In similar ways Davis brings out to tell again the famous story of Igor Stravinsky's return to Russia in the early 60s, and she manages to enter the old composer's head and to reveal his simultaneous pleasure, recognition, and alienation from the St. Petersburg he had left, his life in music a mirror of the life he had escaped: "Musical sequence turning Stravinsky/ away from nationalism at home," his compositional practices "deleting" whole sections of the orchestra previously believed sacrosanct," but at the end of his life modernism gives way and the "old/ Russian tone creeps back."

Davis has a way with the brief lyric, and her images are striking when she needs them to be. From her grocery bag, as she walks back to her flat, the "syllables leak from the plastic bag/ staining the sidewalk." But perhaps her most impressive effects come with her longer, eighty or 100 line poems, in which the accumulation of detail leads to one staggering shrug of rhythm after another, a continual ringing of the changes that has a somewhat symphonic effect.

I was transported! Not an American in Paris (familiar as Gershwin's clarinet) but to St. Petersburg - an exotic, strange land - carried by the poetry of Carol Davis as she struggles
with the Russian language, loneliness, longing, living there with three children for extended periods as a Fulbright scholar. Her images, her imagination, her vivid words - "the deafening snow," "Encircled in the pencil thin canals" - put me there and as she finds solace in Russian music, local birds, identification with the perservering lives and an appreciation for the slow-won loyalties, I felt rewarded by this accomplished work. I can understand why it was given the T.S.Eliot award...well deserved!

With some different art, we see the Grimmer (and Cynosure) caught up in a corporate war, and even worse, the return of The Dancer, and some of Grimjack's arena history. Desperate times for a desperate men. Outstanding stuff, with a great supporting cast as usual.

Not to mention everyone's favorite watch lizard, Bob.

The trade-paperback of the original GRIMJACK comic series. This volume reprints issues fifteen through twenty-one, published in the mid-80's, this is when the book really finds it's voice and takes off. Grimjack is the original "hard-boiled Barbarian"in the deadly PAN-DIMENSIONAL city of CYNOSURE, where reality is changed like underwear, where guns work someplace, magic other places, but swords work everywhere!

In this volume Co-creator TIM TRUMAN leaves the series (only to return better-than-ever in 2005's KILLER INSTINCT, see my review)so we have stunning art by TOM SUTTON and inks, finishes by STEVE ERWIN who also does art in MUNDEN'S BAR segments which are finally included in vol.4. Traditionly the Munden's backstories were light filler/shorts, but here they are included because they are important to filling TRADE WAR plot gaps.

"THIS WHEELS on FIRE" starts the TRADE WARS storyline rolling with the return of PROF. ALTHEA MUELLER who had hermind re-intergratedwith her new body in GRIMJACK 9 (or Legend of GJ vol. 3). This is followed by WOLFPAC which delves deeper into JOHN GAUNT'S history in the ARENA, as agladiator known as THE DANCER plots and his return. GAUNT and BLACKJAC go to free the child-gladiators and end up in arena facing the children themselves. Then the Dancer's plans come to fruitation using Gaunt to set events in motion than begin the TRADE WARS. The Alpha Centauri Commercial Empire had taken over Cynosures ruling body, putting them in a position to force their competitors out of the city, once it is revealed to the other congomerates, the corporate war erupts in a very real sense. GRIMJACK and his partners are in the middle of it, all the while Dancer and his servants wait to kill Gaunt when the timeis right.

This collection contains some of the best storytelling yet in the series. All of the characters that make Grimjack such an interest series, are at their best:NOLESKi, the hick biker-cop, ROSCOE, gaunt's ex-partner, SPOOK, the lady as beautiful as she is dangerous, BLACKJAC, who fought w/ Gaunt in the ARENA, and more. We learn how Gaunt gets his scar in this collection and in the last and best story reprinted we see a badly wounded Grimjack, an easy target for his enemies and any other killer wantin' to make a rep. Sutton's new look for the series sets an amazing new direction for the series unbound by convensional comic style.

I can't wait for tne next set of reprints in volume 5, Gaunt's Death and more.

Not as detailed as McCullough - obviously, it doesn't cover Truman's later years and death - but if I had to have only one Truman work on my shelf it would be this two-volume set. Harry writes as plainly as he speaks; but none of his saltier language appears between these covers.

This memoir, written by Truman because he was badly in need of money, is nothing short of a masterpiece. Truman starts with the days leading up to FDR's death, and makes a special note of how the president looked very ill.

Truman spend two volumes going over his critical eight years in office, a time which included Korea, Communism, the fall of China, the beginnings of Joseph McCarthy, as well as Truman's amazing 1948 victory over New York governor Thomas Dewey.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the presidency. It is well written, and informative.