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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: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 24733
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.918092
ASIN: B00264GHB4
Publication Date: May 1, 2009
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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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 65
 Delightful Reading August 30, 2010
Mike B (Montreal-Canada)
An entertaining and very readable yarn of when ex-president Harry Truman and his wife Bess set out from their home-town in Missouri to motor out to the East Coast to re-visit old friends. At that time there was no secret service assigned to an ex-president (as a matter of fact there was not even a pension for an ex-president).
They journeyed out in Harry's car with an immense amount of luggage (I guess an ex-president cannot just travel with shorts, sandals and a t-shirt). They thought they could travel incognito - and the author humorously recounts the towns, the restaurants, hotels or motels where they stayed and encountered ordinary citizens. Harry was a very sociable fellow and handled himself remarkably well.
The book abounds in delightful anecdotes and is a pleasure to read.
A Great Road Trip Book to Read on a Road Trip August 27, 2010
Cooptown
I read this book while on my own family road trip in the summer of 2010. I like how the author explained the trip Harry and Bess were able to take, revisited their trek, and filled in some of the important events and actions that were taking place during that year. Books like this intrigue me, because they allow me to connect the fenceposts of what I already know with rails of new understandings. I caught myself saying "A-ha, is that so?" often.
The author painted a picture of Harry that invoked a man who had a strong identity of himself. That rang a chord with me. I could relate to the way Harry kept track of his mileage, made friendly with common people along the way, as well as his desire to get back home to where he belonged at the end of the trip. I read several chapters at a time at the end of the day of our road trip, as well as during quiet mornings with a cup of coffee in my hand.
This book is well worth your time. You might be compelled to take a road trip, learn a little more history, or discover who you really are!
I felt as though I was with Harry ... July 30, 2010
Gerald Beeler Jr. (Spring, Texas)
Absolutely delightful! Very easy to read and well documented. I particularly liked the attention to "how it was then" and "how it is now". The restaurants, the hotels, houses ... For instance, the Truman farm is now a shopping center and only the family's farmhouse preserved ... "within spitting distance of a McDonald's, a Sam's Club, an Applebee's, and an IHOP". I guess we call this 'progress'. In any case at the conclusion of the book you really feel as if you were on the entire journey with Harry and Bess. Highly recommended for those who really like the personal touch of history.
 A great read July 26, 2010
spv
This is a great history of small events and trivia from the mid century and a fun look at Harry Truman.
Excellent fun July 4, 2010
Margaret Harney (Kentucky)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I knew next to nothing about Harry Truman before reading this, but I loved this account of his road trip. It was a very entertaining way to learn some presidential history that was new to me.
Harry Truman was the last president to receive neither a pension nor secret service protection when he left office. That's how an unprecedented road trip came about in 1953. When the former president and his Bess wanted to travel from their modest home in Independence, Missouri to the East Coast and back, they hit the road in their personal car, traveling alone and doing their own driving.
Truman didn't have personal wealth and he refused lucrative job offers because he saw trading on the presidency as disrespectful to the office. So without a pension, he and Bess were not only on the road alone, but with finances low they were stopping at the same roadside diners and motels frequented by the more typical and much less illustrious tourists of the 1950s.
The couple had wanted to travel incognito, but of course they were often recognized and graciously stopped to chat and pose for photos with people they met along the way. Several of those photos and personal interviews are included in the book.
My favorite story is when they pulled into the parking lot of an ice cream stand to go to the diner next door. The 12-year-old daughter of the owner of the ice cream stand recognized them immediately. She also knew her dad hated for customers of the diner to use his parking lot. I can't imagine what dad must have thought when his daughter told him Harry Truman was parked out front and asked if she should go tell him to move his car. Of course dad considered a chat and photo with a former president ample payment for a parking space.
There are many historical tidbits packed in with this road trip story. It's interesting to see how the job of being a former president has evolved. I also found Harry Truman to be a more interesting person than I would have ever suspected. Now I want to read the McCullough book and learn even more.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 65
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