"Harry Truman was a reader. He was a lifelong reader. I asked Margaret (Truman, his daughter) one day, 'What would be your father's idea of heaven?' She said, 'Oh, that's easy. It would be a good comfortable armchair and a good reading lamp and a stack of new history and biography (books) that he wanted to read.' He once said that all readers can't be leaders, but all leaders must be readers..." ~ David McCullough
A man whose passion for books celebrates my own literary heart, Harry S Truman (1884-1972) was the only U.S. President of the 20th century who did not attend college. But he loved to read. By age 14, he was said to have read all the books in hometown public library.
"Study men, not historians," he once said.
He met his future wife Bess at Sunday school when he was six, but they did not marry until they were in their 30s. A World War I veteran, one of his favorite sayings was, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
The blunt, no-nonsense leader also had a sign on his desk that read, "the buck stops here." On this day in 1951, Truman stopped the buck with a vengeance, removing General Douglas MacArthur from his role as commander-in-chief of U.N. forces in the Korean War.
Truman retired from office in 1953 and the book lover wrote two volumes of his memoir and built the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, a world-class presidential library.
All I need is a good book...