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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Matthew Algeo, 2011, Chicago Review Press<\/p>\n
This book was\u00c2\u00a0our February book club’s selection.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It was fun reading about Harry Truman and his wife, Bess, in their new roles as ex-president and ex-first lady when they took a road trip\u00c2\u00a0to Washington,\u00c2\u00a0D.C.,\u00c2\u00a0Philadelphia, and New York in 1953.\u00c2\u00a0 This was probably the last time that an ex-president attempted to assume the role of a private, ordinary citizen after serving.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Ex-presidents since Harry have all attempted, in one way or another, to capitalize on their\u00c2\u00a0special status.<\/p>\n
Harry Truman was also the last President to leave office without any kind of a pension.\u00c2\u00a0 He had to pay his own office expense and scrape by without any substantial source of income.\u00c2\u00a0 He was finally granted a small pension quite a few years after he left office.<\/p>\n
The author\u00c2\u00a0tried to trace the trip that Harry and Bess took by traveling the same highways and attempting to eat at the same restaurants and to stay at the same hotels.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0He goes into great detail describing the changes that have occurred in the various places since 1953.<\/p>\n
The book might have been\u00c2\u00a0a much better book if the author had been able to\u00c2\u00a0derive any\u00c2\u00a0significant meaning from\u00c2\u00a0his observations, perhaps by tying them to some larger historical or social\u00c2\u00a0trends.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, he\u00c2\u00a0writes an\u00c2\u00a0inordinate amount about the history of the individuals and buildings\u00c2\u00a0Harry and Bess encountered on their trip.\u00c2\u00a0 The result is that the book is full of trivial facts that seem to have no particular bearing on the\u00c2\u00a0story.\u00c2\u00a0 The book was about 225 pages\u00c2\u00a0but the number of pages that held pertinent information was closer to 125.\u00c2\u00a0 The extra 100 pages were a waste of time.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Matthew Algeo, 2011, Chicago Review Press This book was\u00c2\u00a0our February book club’s selection.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It was fun reading about Harry Truman and his wife, Bess, in their new roles as ex-president and ex-first lady when they took a road trip\u00c2\u00a0to Washington,\u00c2\u00a0D.C.,\u00c2\u00a0Philadelphia, …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-1558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}