Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Missouri Mule: How Harry Truman's Stubbornness and Determination Helped Win World War II and Led Him to the Presidency

Missouri Mule: How Harry Truman's Stubbornness and Determination Helped Win World War II and Led Him to the Presidency

Currie

Hardcover

Presidents & Heads of StateInternational Relations

ISBN10: 1680535951
ISBN13: 9781680535952
Publisher: Academica Press
Published: Mar 16 2026
Pages: 388
Weight: 1.52
Height: 0.88 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
On February 3, 1940, Harry S Truman, a freshman Senator from Missouri, held a press conference to announce that he would run for reelection. Truman also said in that same press conference that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should not run for a third term as president because, in Truman's words, There is no indispensable man in a democracy. Roosevelt ignored Truman's admonition, secured the Democratic nomination, and ran successfully for a third term. Roosevelt refused to endorse Truman's reelection campaign and even tried to bribe him--offering him a place on the Interstate Commerce Commission--in an effort to get him to drop out of the race. Four years later, Roosevelt chose Truman as his running mate, a decision that led directly to Truman's becoming president when Roosevelt unexpectedly died only eighty-two days into his fourth term. Why, then, did FDR choose Truman over all others? The answer to that question is the primary subject of Missouri Mule, prize-winning author James Currie's new book, which traces Truman's rise from Senate backbencher in 1940 to Roosevelt's running mate in 1944. As secondary--and intriguing--themes, this book draws upon extensive original research in the National Archives to expose massive Army and Navy wartime bungling and wastefulness and reveals how some U.S. corporations were more interested in increasing shareholder dividends and corporate profits than in providing the quality materiel needed to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese. As chair of the primary Senate oversight committee that investigated our country's World War II defense build-up and expenditures, Harry Truman displayed all the best characteristics of the Missouri mules he had worked with as a young man on his farm: the stubbornness and determination that helped us win the war and made him one of our best Presidents.

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