Author:
Pietrusza, David, 1949-
Imprint:New York : Union Square Press, c2011.
Descriptionxxiii, 520 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.
Note:Cast of Characters (starting p. viii) -- 1. "Three sizes too large" (starting p. 1) -- 2. "You judge. I can't." (starting p. 3) -- 3. "I hope it's the same team again, Henry" (starting p. 15) -- 4. "You men who have nigger children" (starting p. 28) -- 5. "I'll be different, not like I used to be" (starting p. 38) -- 6. "To err is Truman" (starting p. 51) -- 7. "My very stomach turned" (starting p. 65) -- 8. "The South can be considered safely Democratic" (starting p. 75) -- 9. "No one laughs at Harold Stassen" (starting p. 83) -- 10. "Maybe Masaryk had cancer" (starting p. 92) -- 11. "The Bronx is not cheering" (starting p. 105) -- 12. "A lost ball in high grass" (starting p. 119) -- 13. "We have a lot of Communists in New York" (starting p. 133) -- 14. "Professors who scratch their waffles" (starting p. 148) -- 15. "Why can't a simple soldier be left alone ...?" (starting p. 158) -- 16. "It's such outrageous sport, really" (starting p. 171) -- 17. "It might have been worse" (starting p. 181) -- 18. "Shifty and somewhat slimy" (starting p. 194) -- 19. "What do these people want?" (starting p. 201) -- 20. "The bright sunshine of human rights" (starting p. 206) -- 21. "Behold, the validity of Christian principles" (starting p. 219) -- 22. "An interesting and instructive evening" (starting p. 226) -- 23. "The wool hat woman of Byron, Georgia" (starting p. 237) -- 24. "I have been thinking of you holding the casket" (starting p. 249) -- 25. "Half of the gallery are FBI agents" (starting p. 258) -- 26. "Bases, bombs, Moscow, Leningrad, etc." (starting p. 272) -- 27. "A last hysterical gasp of an expiring administration" (starting p. 279) -- 28. "I have never laid eyes on him" (starting p. 291) -- 29. "The unseemly spectacle we are now witnessing" (starting p. 302) -- 30. "You simply can't make a politician out of him" (starting p. 312) -- 31. "Fifty million pounds of lard" (starting p. 330) -- 32. "Daddy, you shouldn't say `hell'" (starting p. 343) -- 33. "Ain't he coming?" (starting p. 362) -- 34. "The campaign is ending and you still don't know" (starting p. 376) -- 35. "Don't bother me anymore; I'm going to bed" (starting p. 385) -- 36. "One for the books" (starting p. 405) -- Acknowledgments (starting p. 413) -- Notes (starting p. 414) --Sources (starting p. 487) -- Index (starting p. 509).
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:The 1948 election was a war for the soul of the Democratic Party, with accidental president Harry Truman pitted against Henry Wallace, his embittered left-wing predecessor as vice president, and young South Carolina segregationist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. On the GOP side, it's a four-way battle between cold-as-ice New Yorker Tom Dewey, Minnesota upstart Harold Stassen, stodgy but brilliant Ohio conservative Robert Taft, and imperious but aged Douglas MacArthur. Author David Pietrusza goes beyond the headlines to place in context a down-to-the-wire fight against the background of an erupting Cold War, the birth of Israel, storms over civil rights, and domestic communism. Featuring a stellar supporting cast: Alger Hiss, Whitaker Chambers, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Earl Warren, Paul Robeson, Lillian Hellman, Pete Seeger, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joe McCarthy, Clark Clifford, William O. Douglas, George C. Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, H. L. Mencken, Harold Ickes, Clare and Henry Luce, and Ronald Reagan.--From publisher description.
