A very detailed account of one year as the US president, perhaps one of the years when most happened if not the most important year. Ending the war in Europe, wrestling with the Soviets, ending the war in Japan, and more wrestling with the Soviets. Overly detailed in places, yet giving me the impression that Truman was a wise and patient man. ( )

First volume of Truman's memoirs, which is rather uneven. The first segment covers his first days in office in great detail, and is one of the best records of that period available. The book then segues to auto-biography, which, while quite interesting, greatly interrupts the flow of the narrative and doesn't add all that much to what follows. When we pick up the thread of the rest of the book, which pretty much covers the May, 1945 - December, 1946 period, a lot of it is an overly detailed slog. In some cases, Truman quotes from documents in haec verba, including one long conversation with Churchill. Not an ideal thing for memoirs. It might have been better had Truman written a book specifically on the Potsdam Conference, which takes up a fair slice of the second half of the book, and in some cases, reads like minutes of the meeting. Flashes of the Truman wit and hard-headedness can be seen in the book, but for the most part, they seem to have been edited out. Slightly disappointing. ( )