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Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip | 
| Author: Matthew Algeo
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $13.58
as of 11/23/2009 01:29 MST details
You Save: $11.37 (46%)
New (32) Used (15) from $12.99
Seller: a1books
Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 4417
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 1556527772
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.918092
EAN: 9781556527777
ASIN: 1556527772
Publication Date: May 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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. |
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 45
 Delightful October 25, 2009
Michael Lambert (Louisiana)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Touching, insightful, endearing and funny...this book is a pleasure to read, and I marvel at the fact that Harry and Bess were able to do what they did, which in a way reads like some sort of avuncular fairytale. I can't help but be saddened, also, by the fact that it all happened in another country, far away and long ago. To say that America has changed since those days is a real understatement and goes without saying, and its changes, to a large degree, make for melancholy reading. Overall, a splendidly entertaining book.
 Too much information October 24, 2009
ATP Jim
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I enjoyed the story of Harry and Bess's road trip. I was reading the story before bed
and was in a good mood. Then the scene switched to Sing Sing prison and the gruesome execution of the
Rosenburgs. While Harry napped, the two accused spies met a horrible end. Did we need to know that
Ethel went down hard? I think not. My mood switched rapidly and I quit reading for the night quite discomforted.
I too feel that the author added much unneeded padding. If he had just stuck to the true facts of the road trip
and left out all of his contributions about what was happening in the world then and now, the book would have been more excellent.
 "Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure" October 19, 2009
Leonard H. Smith
One very wonderful story about one of our greatest Presidents. A story about a President that will never happen again and confirms the way the man lived his life.
A Heckuva Ride October 12, 2009
Hank Drake (Cleveland, OH United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Truman is the definitive biography of the man from Missouri. But I felt that book did not give enough coverage to the twenty years after Truman left office. Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, by Matthew Algeo, is a partial remedy to that. A relatively apolitical book, it covers a 1953 car trip Truman took with his wife, Bess, from their home in Independence, Missouri, to Washington, DC, up to New York City, and back to independence. Harry drove while Bess sat in the passenger seat, watching the speedometer to make sure Harry didn't speed. There was no secret service protection in those days, and while Harry and Bess tried to travel in anonymity, the press managed to track the couple down from time to time.
For those accustomed to thinking of Harry Truman as the plain spoken, quick tempered man who once threatened to punch a music reviewer for panning his daughter's singing, this book will come as a surprise. One factor that comes through is Truman's meticulousness. As the former owner of a men's clothing store (known as a haberdashery back in the day) Truman was always a snappy dresser, with a pocket kerchief carefully folded so that all four corners showed. The former president was just as particular about the way he packed his luggage (so that clothing emerged perfectly folded), the care of his new car (with Bess keeping tab of the gasoline expenditures), and the trip route (planned by Truman himself, long before the days of GPS).
Another factor of Truman's personality that emerges is his essential populism. He was not a demagogue populist like Pat Buchanan, or a corporate pseudo-populist like Glenn Beck. Harry Truman was always for the "little guy". He loved people, cared about them (he even took a two hour side trip to spend time with an elderly woman he'd never met), and was genuinely interested in learning about their lives.
Some have complained about the author's insertion of himself into the narrative and comparisons of present-day America with Truman's era. But Algeo's contemporary narration points out how America has changed since 1953. In some ways for the better: racial integration, and equality of the sexes. But we are a less personal, more corporate country than we were in 1953. Harry Truman would be saddened to know how many of the little diners, shops, and motels he stayed at have either gone out of business or been co-opted by large corporations. (I could never imagine Harry shopping at a Walmart.) Despite the number of times I smiled when reading this book, there were tinges of sadness as well.
Harry Truman's Great Adventure October 8, 2009
David M. Keck (Johnstown, Ohio)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book gives a slice of Harry and Bess Truman's life that is informative and interesting. It is well researched and contains contextual information and photographs that add to its value as a book of history as well as enjoyable reading.
The author visited the places described in the book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 45
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