Customer Reviews

Bess and Harry: An American Love Story

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I'm so glad I came across this book, because I recently viewed a two-part biography of Harry Truman on PBS; and it left me with an entirely wrong impression of Bess Truman. According to that television biography, Bess and daughter Margaret spent as little time at the White House as they could - the film made much of Bess as a mostly absent First Lady, and of President Truman as a lonely man abandoned by his family as the price of serving his country in its highest office.

According to this book, written while a widowed Bess Truman was still very much alive, she not only supported her husband's political career; she orchestrated it. She conducted herself as First Lady in a way quite unlike her predecessor, Eleanor Roosevelt; but inactive, aloof, and uninvolved she was not. Since author Robbins cites many reliable sources, not just his conversations with Mrs. Truman herself, I'm inclined to believe his book instead of that TV biography. The Bess it described could hardly have been Jacqueline Kennedy's favorite among all earlier First Ladies, but the Bess of this book most certainly rings true in that role.

This book was mostly fluff and really didn't add anything to my knowledge of the private life of Harry and Bess. It may be more interesting if you have not read much about them. ks