Modest but informative
Robert H. Ferrell's description of the choosing of Harry Truman as vice-president--and therefore the almost certain next president--is only 95 pages in length, not counting the 30 pages of end notes and the bibliography and index. The text of David McCullough's Truman biography is 992 pages long. Yet I feel that I have learned more about the true character of Harry Truman--and of FDR as well--from Ferrell than I learned from McCullough. McCullough's book was published in 1992; Ferrell's came out in 1994, so he had the benefit of McCullough's prior scholarship. The importance difference, though, is that Ferrell comes across as a real scholar who is interested in the truth. After reading Ferrell it becomes obvious that McCullough's book is little more than Truman puffery.
The great revelation in Ferrell's book is that on the eve of his nomination for vice president Truman was very worried about a major "skeleton," as he himself regarded it, being made public. That is that he had put both his wife and his sister on his Senate payroll, and, worse than that, neither did any actual work for the office. The potential scandal was later papered over during the campaign when putative opponent Claire Booth Luce, wife of Time magazine publisher Henry Luce, went straight to the capillaries by calling the wife "Payroll Bess." Luce never mentioned the sister and failed to reach the heart of the problem, that both were sham employees.
McCullough just parrots what came out in the newspapers. Ferrell digs deeper and lets the chips fall where they may.
