Independence is the county seat of Jackson County, Missouri, United States. It is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. In 2020, it had a total population of 123,011, making it the fifth-most populous city in Missouri.
The Kansas City Star is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes.
George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
Elizabeth Virginia Truman was the wife of President Harry S. Truman and the First Lady of the United States from 1945 to 1953. She also served as the second lady of the United States from January to April 1945. At 97 years, 247 days, she remains the longest-lived first and second lady.
Charles Griffith Ross was White House Press Secretary between 1945 and 1950 for President Harry S. Truman.
The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and resting place of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States (1945–1953), his wife Bess and daughter Margaret, and is located on U.S. Highway 24 in Independence, Missouri. It was the first presidential library created under the provisions of the 1955 Presidential Libraries Act and is one of thirteen presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
David Gaub McCullough was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.
Merle Dale Miller was an American writer, novelist, and author who is perhaps best remembered for his best-selling biography of Harry S. Truman, and as a pioneer in the gay rights movement.
The Truman Committee, formally known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, was a United States Congressional investigative body, headed by Senator Harry S. Truman. The bipartisan special committee was formed in March 1941 to find and correct problems in US war production with waste, inefficiency, and war profiteering. The Truman Committee proved to be one of the most successful investigative efforts ever mounted by the U.S. government: an initial budget of $15,000 was expanded over three years to $360,000 to save an estimated $10–15 billion in military spending and thousands of lives of U.S. servicemen. For comparison, the entire cost of the simultaneous Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bombs, was $2 billion. Chairing the committee helped Truman make a name for himself beyond his political machine origins and was a major factor in the decision to nominate him as vice president, which would propel him to the presidency after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and briefly in 1945 as the 34th vice president of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt's death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the wake of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated Congress.
Truman is a 1995 American biographical drama television film directed by Frank Pierson and written by Thomas Rickman, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1992 book, Truman. Starring Gary Sinise as Harry S. Truman, the film centers on Truman's humble beginnings, his rise to the presidency, World War II, and his decision to use the first atomic bomb. The film's tagline is "It took a farmer's hand to shape a nation." The film aired on HBO on September 9, 1995.
Robert Hugh Ferrell was an American historian. He authored more than 60 books on topics including the U.S. presidency, World War I, and U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. One of the country's leading historians, Ferrell was widely considered the preeminent authority on the administration of Harry S. Truman, and also wrote books about half a dozen other 20th-century presidents. He was thought by many in the field to be the "dean of American diplomatic historians", a title he disavowed.
John Adams is a 2001 biography of the Founding Father and second U.S. President John Adams, written by the popular American historian David McCullough, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. It was adapted into the 2008 television miniseries of the same name by HBO Films. Since the TV miniseries debuted, an alternative cover has been added to the book showing Paul Giamatti as John Adams. The book is available as both hardcover and paperback.
The Democratic Party's 1944 nomination for Vice President of the United States was determined at the 1944 Democratic National Convention on July 21, 1944. U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri was nominated to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt's running mate in his bid to be re-elected for a fourth term.
The first inauguration of Harry S. Truman as the 33rd president of the United States was held at 7:09 pm on Thursday, April 12, 1945, at the Cabinet Room inside the White House in Washington, D.C., following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt earlier that day. The inauguration—the seventh non-scheduled, extraordinary inauguration to ever take place—marked the commencement of the first term of Harry S. Truman as president.
The Wright Brothers is a 2015 non-fiction book written by the popular historian David McCullough and published by Simon & Schuster. It is a history of the American inventors and aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. The book was on The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list for seven weeks in 2015.
Harry S. Truman: A Life is a 1994 biography of Harry S. Truman, president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, by historian Robert Hugh Ferrell. Although it was overshadowed by the popular success of David McCullough's Pulitzer-winning biography Truman, Ferrell's book was widely praised by scholars in his field.
Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 is a 1983 book edited by historian Robert Hugh Ferrell collecting more than 500 letters from U.S. president Harry S. Truman to his wife Bess, ranging from the couple's early courtship to his post-presidency retirement. Well-regarded by other historians, the book also achieved popular success, becoming a New York Times bestseller.
In 1948, Harry S. Truman and Alben W. Barkley were elected president and vice president of the United States, defeating Republican nominees Thomas E. Dewey and Earl Warren. Truman, a Democrat and vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt, had ascended to the presidency upon Roosevelt's death in 1945. He announced his candidacy for election on March 8, 1948. Unchallenged by any major nominee in the Democratic primaries, he won almost all of them easily; however, many Democrats like James Roosevelt opposed his candidacy and urged former Chief of Staff of the United States Army Dwight D. Eisenhower to run instead.
