Friday, January 25, 2013

Truman-Acheson Letters?

Has anyone bothered to publish the correspondence of President Harry S. Truman and his Secretary of State (and beloved friend) Dean Acheson?   From the snippets I've seen, I'd guess it would be at least as riveting as the correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and for the same reason--two old men who had stood at the center of the cataclysm of their time, now free of ambition or any need for pretense, delighted to share their mature wisdom with each other.

You'd think--but wait a minute, turns out there is such a volume, published in 2010 and co-edited by Acheson's son, David.  There are effusive endorsements from the Great and Good, and five-star Amazon reviews--but only three of them, half as many Peter Hochstein gets for Heiress Strangled in Molten Chocolate.  No accounting for tastes, I guess.  And I don't  suppose anybody under 60 40 has any idea who Dean Acheson was.  Or for that matter, Harry Truman.   Still for old times' sake, I'll have to give it a try.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"who Dean Acheson was."
Wasn't he one of the high level communists in the Truman administration? Who was that guy who had a list of them?