Annotated Table of Contents: Politics and Govt. 03

Memoirs by Harry S. Truman. Vol. One. Read to understand the magnitude of Harry S. Truman’s achievement, the flexibility of his personality, the sophistication of his political skills and the application of his fundamental principles. Deep down, he was an angry politician who rarely showed his anger. This memoir belies his image of a small-town hayseed who somehow managed to stumble through his Presidency.

Memoirs by Harry S. Truman. Vol. Two. The second volume of Truman’s Memoirs concerns the major issues with which he had to deal after WWII: Russia and the Cold War; the Berlin Blockade; labor, management and the Taft-Hartley Law; Korea, Communist China; MacArthur’s revolt; the unbelievable Marshall Plan and, of course, his upset re-election to the Presidency.

Robert Kennedy and His Times, Vol. 1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Schlesinger divides the topics in the book among RFK’s growing up; his shyness and feelings of inferiority to his brothers; his physical exertions; his mixed achievement in school; his work on Congressional investigations, including those concerned with corrupt unions; his work in organizing his brother’s Senatorial and Presidential campaigns; his work as Attorney General and his battle with institutional inertia, particularly the FBI and J Edgar Hoofer; his work with his brother on Civil Rights; his trips to foreign, unfriendly countries in which he confronted aggressive criticism of the United States, especially from the young; and his work with his brothers in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Robert Kennedy and His Times, Vol. 2. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The second volume of this biography of RFK by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., covers the period of the assassination of his brother, his stormy relationship with LBJ, becoming the Junior Senator from New York, considering the vice-presidency under LBJ and, finally, when he realizes that Vietnam is tearing American society apart, the run for the Presidency that was aborted by his own assassination.