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Truman is David McCullough's cradle-to-grave account of the life and career of Harry S. Truman, a president who, despite being overshadowed by the likes of Washington, Lincoln and FDR in collective historical memory, arguably had an even greater impact on the world than those more vaunted leaders. Certainly, one gets the impression from McCullough's hefty tome that Truman was one of the more courageous men to assume the presidency, trusting his instincts and sense of honour as he navigated the grim conclusion of World War II, then clung brilliantly to power in the face of Thomas E. Dewey's challenge -- an election campaign about which McCullough writes brilliantly. Indeed, Truman tells you just about everything you might want to know about its subject, although McCullough at times shies away from the aspects of Truman's character that he'd evidently rather not know. I didn't really buy McCullough's insistence that Truman, who was given to using racist language in his correspondence, had issues with the Civil Rights Movement simply because he fell for J. Edgar Hoover's "communism" bugaboo, and especially not after McCullough had already documented Truman's contempt for Joseph McCarthy and his fellow red scare witchfinders. Despite this, McCullough doesn't go all-in on the whitewashing of his subject like lesser biographers might have. Ultimately, Truman emerges as a credible, essential biography of one of America's greatest leaders.