1948
Subtitle: Harry Truman's improbable victory and the year that transformed America's role in the world
By: David Pietrusza
Publisher: Sterlling Pub.; Union Square Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 520
ISBN-13: 9781402767487
Subjects: Politics and government; Political culture; Biography; Democratic Party (U.S.); Presidents; Social change; Politicians; Election; Presidential candidates; Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ); Foreign relations; History
Other titles: Nineteen forty-eight
Description: The 1948 election was a war for the soul of the Democratic Party, with accidental president Harry Truman pitted against Henry Wallace, his embittered left-wing predecessor as vice president, and young South Carolina segregationist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. On the GOP side, it's a four-way battle between cold-as-ice New Yorker Tom Dewey, Minnesota upstart Harold Stassen, stodgy but brilliant Ohio conservative Robert Taft, and imperious but aged Douglas MacArthur. Author David Pietrusza goes beyond the headlines to place in context a down-to-the-wire fight against the background of an erupting Cold War, the birth of Israel, storms over civil rights, and domestic communism. Featuring a stellar supporting cast: Alger Hiss, Whitaker Chambers, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Earl Warren, Paul Robeson, Lillian Hellman, Pete Seeger, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joe McCarthy, Clark Clifford, William O. Douglas, George C. Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, H.L. Mencken, Harold Ickes, Clare and Henry Luce, and Ronald Reagan.--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.