The Connell Short Guide to Truman and the Post-War World

Harry Truman was one of the most unlikely of American presidents. Until a few months before he assumed office in April 1945 charged first with ending the Second World War and then with managing the transition to a Cold War with the Soviet Union it is unlikely he ever seriously thought about the White House. A failed businessman, he was an accidental president, taking office on the death of the popular Franklin Roosevelt, and leaving it with the lowest approval ratings of any president in the modern era. Yet today many judge him to have been a great, or nearly great, holder of the office.