Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
by:
Matthew Algeo (author)
On June 19, 1953, Harry Truman got up early, packed the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker, and did something no other former president has done before or since: he hit the road. No Secret Service protection. No traveling press. Just Harry and his childhood sweetheart Bess, off to visit old...
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On June 19, 1953, Harry Truman got up early, packed the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker, and did something no other former president has done before or since: he hit the road. No Secret Service protection. No traveling press. Just Harry and his childhood sweetheart Bess, off to visit old friends, take in a Broadway play, celebrate their wedding anniversary in the Big Apple, and blow a bit of the money he’d just received to write his memoirs. Hopefully incognito. In this lively history, author Matthew Algeo meticulously details how Truman’s plan to blend in went wonderfully awry. Fellow diners, bellhops, cabbies, squealing teenagers at a Future Homemakers of America convention, and one very by-the-book Pennsylvania state trooper all unknowingly conspired to blow his cover. Algeo revisits the Trumans’ route, staying at the same hotels and eating at the same diners, and takes readers on brief detours into topics such as the postwar American auto industry, McCarthyism, the nation’s highway system, and the decline of Main Street America. By the end of the 2,500-mile journey, you will have a new and heartfelt appreciation for America’s last citizen-president.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781569767078 (1569767076)
Publish date: April 1st 2011
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Pages no: 288
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
History,
Book Club,
Politics,
American History,
Biography Memoir,
Presidents
A couple of years ago my in-laws called offering to meet us in Independence, Missouri to tour the Truman library. First, I was surprised because they are dyed in the wool Republicans who think that all Democrats have already punched a one way ticket to the fiery furnaces of HELL. Second I was excit...