Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo

One of the benefits of being a librarian is that you sometimes come across a book you would never have looked for & it turns out to be really good. Public radio reporter Algeo has written an excellent book that takes the reader back to the 1950s & the end of the Truman presidency. In June of 1953, a few months after he left office, Harry & Bess set off on a road trip that took them from Missouri to Washington, New York & Pennsylvania, & back to Missouri. They had no secret service detail & they were trying to travel anonymously. As Algeo follows their route he regales us with entertaining, interesting & informative facts, from politics, local culture, history & much much more. This is definitely a story about people though, not dry facts, & the reader learns such a lot - Harry did not even have a president's pension when he set out on his trip, he and Bess had returned to the same house they had lived in before his presidency, in Independence, Missouri, he loved cars & liked to speed & often took walks. Whatever your political affiliation this is a book about a time past, when a farmer could become a president & when the role of ex-president was a lot different than it is today. It is not a history book but a reflection of two lives, of their stories, of those they meet, & of the time & place of a past era.
As Algeo says "The story of their trip, then, is the story of life in America in 1953, a time of unbridled optimism and unmitigated cold war fear. It is also the story of the monumental changes that have occurred since then."

Matthew Algeo's book website
http://www.trumanroadtrip.com/page/page/6814760.htm

"While presidential biographies by David McCullough and Edmund Morris might be likened to Beethoven symphonies in their magisterial sweep, 'Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure' resonates Aaron Copeland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man' - brassy, bright, energetic, brief and declaratively American."
Washington Times