Published for the first time: the personal letters of President Harry S. Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, from the year when both were newly out of office until Achesonrs"s death at the age of seventy-eight-giants of the postwar period moving from an official relationship to one of candor, humor, and personal affection. The friendship was an unlikely one. Truman was a Missouri farmer with the unpolished but sharp intellect of the largely self-educated man, most comfortable in the company of poker-playing cronies. Acheson was Connecticut-born, Yale- and Harvard-educated, urbane, intellectual, and well-off. But working under Franklin D. Roosevelt, he had learned to dislike Rooseveltrs"s patrician manner, and he came to feel that Truman was a better leader, "the captain with the mighty heart." Together they were primarily responsible for the Marshall Plan and NATO, among other world-shaping initiatives. But in these letters, we find them sharing the often surprising, always illuminating opinions, ideas, and feelings that the strictures of their offices kept them from expressing. A remarkable resource that brings to light the very human side of two of the most important statesmen of the twentieth century.
