Truman
In this incisive and readable biography of Harry S. Truman, Roy Jenkins provides a radical reassessment of the American President whose reputation, more than any other of this century, has risen since he left office. He shows that the Truman presidency (1945-53) built the structures within which the Western world has lived since the Second World War. The Marshall Plan promoted not only the recovery, but the unity of Western Europe; NATO enabled this prosperity to grow within a framework of security. Truman's decisions - for all his private indiscretions and occasional muddles - were film and level-headed, guiding the Western world through the many dangers of the unstable postwar years.