"The nearly eight years of Harry Truman's presidency--among the most turbulent in American history--were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic weapon; the beginning of the Cold War; creation of the NATO alliance; the founding of the United Nations; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight in Korea. Historians have tended...

When Harry S. Truman left the White House in 1953, his reputation was in ruins. Tarred by corruption scandals and his decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan, he was considered by many a failed president. But in Citizen Soldier, Aida D. Donald revises that image with a penetrating portrait showing that Truman deserves recognition as the principal architect of the American postwar world.

Elliott Maraniss, a WWII veteran who had commanded an all-black company in the Pacific, was spied on by the FBI, named as a communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and blacklisted for five years. Yet he never lost faith in America and emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact. David Maraniss weaves his father's story through the lives of his inquisitors...

"From the decks of the Mayflower straight through to Donald Trump's "American carnage," class has always played a role in American life. In this remarkable work, Steve Fraser twines our nation's past with his own family's history, deftly illustrating how class matters precisely because Americans work so hard to pretend it doesn't. He examines six signposts of American history--the settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown; the ratification of the Constitution;...

"For decades now, America's national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it. Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for...