First published 2020
Joe Scarborough examines Harry Truman's pivotal presidency during 1947, when the unprepared leader faced mounting Soviet aggression across Europe. The book focuses on Truman's domestic political campaign to abandon America's 150-year isolationist tradition and embrace global leadership. Scarborough details how Stalin's westward expansion threatened Turkey while communist forces conquered Greece, leaving a financially devastated Britain unable to defend Western interests. Only America possessed the resources to counter this threat, but Truman needed to unite Republicans and Democrats behind a radical policy reversal. The author chronicles the political maneuvering that led to Truman's March 12, 1947 address to Congress, where he announced the containment policy later known as the Truman Doctrine. This commitment to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures" marked America's entry into its long struggle against Soviet communism. Scarborough presents this transformation as a story of bipartisan cooperation and presidential courage that shaped decades of American foreign policy.
Genres: history, 20th-century, political-science, politics, biography-memoir, american-history
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: bipartisan-cooperation, presidential-courage
Setting: America, Europe, Greece, Turkey
Period: 1947, Cold War, Post-World War II
288 pages · Hardcover · Harper