Thanks, Judy -- for the answer to the Truman name question and also for
letting me know that the biography interesting. I started McCullough's
biograpy of John Adams and found it boring (or maybe it get through it a
different subject's biography; I can't remember now but it, too garnered
awards and was highly acclaimed but I was massively disappointed and
couldn't finish it.
On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 9:52 PM, Judy s. <cherryjam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I read David McCullough's book "Truman" last year, and remembered today
that McCullough wrote about how Truman came to have just an "S" for his
middle name. Here's what McCullough said:
"In a quandary over a middle name, Mattie and John [Truman's parents] were
undecided whether to honor her father or his. In the end they compromised
with the letter S. It could be taken to stand for Solomon or Shipp, but
actually stood for nothing, a practice not unknown among the Scotch-Irish,
even for first names. The baby's first name was Harry, after his Uncle
Harrison. Harry S. Truman he would be."
I've been reading presidential biographies off and on for the last 3
years, and this one I really enjoyed. It was comprehensive and fair-minded
without being dry or boring. Many of the presidential biographies I've
tried reading are just awful: dreadfully biased or written in a dry
pedantic style that reads to me like the equivalent of eating month old dry
toast.
For anyone who is interested in reading it, here's the link to it through
Bookshare: <https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/1041505>
https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/1041505. It's available in an audio
version through NLS BARD, too. It won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, btw, for
biography.
--
Judy s.
Follow me on Twitter at QuackersNCheese
<https://twitter.com/QuackersNCheese>
