Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the beguiling (The New York Times) first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how a seemingly ordinary man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century. The nearly eight years of Harry Truman's presidency-among the most turbulent in American history-were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan, the first use of an atomic bomb and the development of far deadlier weapons, the start of the Cold War and the creation of the Nato alliance, the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe, the Red Scare, and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight a costly limited war in Korea. Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one's fellow citizens and fought for a national health insurance plan. While he was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans and came to support stronger civil rights laws, he never relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri.