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544 pages, Hardcover
First published April 23, 2024
Unlike previous histories of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies, this book focuses on the transition— the long shadow cast by the dead president, Truman’s struggle to emerge, and how decisions during the years of transition, 1944 through 1948, impacted the peoples who survived the sword.*Thus, compared to a full biography like David McCullough's Truman, Ascent to Power is relatively brief and focused. (I was taken aback by Roll's calling the entire four years of Truman's first term the "transition", but since he is straightforward about doing that, I have no real complaint.) It is not by any means a light read, and there was little here I didn't already know. I had not previously appreciated the extent to which these four years made the world I grew up in. That was an enlightenment.