Showing results by author "Robert H. Ferrell" in All Categories

Few U.S. presidents have captured the imagination of the American people as has Harry S. Truman. In this new biography, Robert H. Ferrell, widely regarded as an authority on the 33rd president, challenges the popular characterization of Truman as a man who rarely sought the offices he received, revealing instead a man who - with modesty, commitment to service, and basic honesty - moved with method and system toward the presidency.

After Harding's untimely death in 1923, a variety of attacks and unsubstantiated claims left the public with a tainted impression of him. Rumors circulated of the president's death by poison, either by his own hand or by that of his wife; allegations of an illegitimate daughter were made; and question were raised concerning the extent of Harding's knowledge of the Teapot Dome scandal and of irregularities in the Veterans' Bureau.

Few US presidents have captured the imagination of the American people as has Harry S. Truman. In this biography, Robert H. Ferrell, widely regarded as an authority on the 33rd president, challenges the popular characterization of Truman as a man who rarely sought the offices he received, revealing instead a man who - with modesty, commitment to service, and basic honesty - moved with method and system toward the presidency. No other historian has ever demonstrated such command over the vast amounts of material on Truman's life.

During American participation in World War I, many events caught the public’s attention, but none so much as the plight of the Lost Battalion. Comprising some 500 men of the 77th Division, the so-called battalion was entrapped on the side of a ravine in the Argonne Forest by German forces from October 2 to 7, 1918. Now, in Five Days in October, historian Robert H. Ferrell presents new material - previously unavailable - about what really happened during those days in the forest.