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Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure
Matthew Algeo
The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
Chicago Review Press
May 2009
On Sale: May 1, 2009
256 pages ISBN: 1556527772 EAN: 9781556527777 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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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