The Attempt on President Truman's Life

books:


	• American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill President Truman--and the Shoot-out That Stopped It Stephen Hunter, John Jr. Bainbridge Simon & Schuster, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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The Attempt on President Truman's Life

Authors Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge provide the reader with minute details on the assassination attempt by Puerto Rican Nationalists on President Harry Truman outside Blair House on November 1, 1950. Many of the details provided are those they perceive to be in the mind of each of the assassins and those they are attacking during the gunfight. These details are interesting and perhaps correct. I feel it makes for a more interesting book. To me, the main drawback of the book is its disjointedness. Whenever a character is introduced into the story we are provided with a chapter delving into their background from years before. Due to this method of writing the book loses its continuity. The authors make a convincing case that the attempt may have been a part of a wider conspiracy. Security for presidents tightened significantly following the attempt on Truman's life. Truman did not run for reelection in 1952, and the attempt on his life may very well have been a factor in his decision. I have to admit to being one of those the authors refer to as those who weren't aware of this attempt on the life of President Truman, but confuse it with an incident in 1954 when four Puerto Rican Nationalists had a shootout in Congress. The book educated me, but I did not like getting sidetracked with chapters introducing the characters when they entered the story.

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Good Story Telling

Hunter does a good job covering a relatively unknown historical event. The writing style (constantly bouncing around) was tiresome after awhile.

In addition to learning the details and characters behind this assasination attempt, the reader gains some insight into revolutionary movements, the use of sleeper cells, law enforcement training in the post-WWII era, stress reaction in a gunfight, etc...

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great...love it

This book is awesome. First book I read about the subject. You will find yourself reading a chapter and saying what the hell...and then he draws it all together. It is written very well.

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This is a winner!

This has everything you want in a good book. A great story, history, drama, and pathos. I am a history teacher and was impressed by both the depth of research and the quality of the writing.
This is about 2 Puerto Rican Nationalists who, compelled by their fervent beliefs, tried to assassinate President Harry Truman in 1950. Most people do not realize how close they came to succeeding.
The story alternates between historical background and a moment to moment account of the gun fight that occurred on that day.
This book kept me enthralled the entire time I was reading it. I can't think of anyone who would not thoroughly enjoy this book.

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Different Hunter

Not the usual Stephen Hunter. This reads more like a history text than an
action novel....but then, it is history, and presumably accurate history.
Earl Swagger would have had a field day with these clowns.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

"American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event -- the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C., that saved the president's life. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Hunter, the widely admired and bestselling novelist and author of such books as Havana, Hot Springs, and Dirty White Boys, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of an act of terrorism that almost succeeded. They have pieced together, at last, the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the president and how a few good men -- ordinary guys who were willing to risk their lives in the line of duty -- stopped it. It is a book about courage -- on both sides -- and about what politics and devotion to a cause can lead men to do, and about what actually happens, second by second, when a gunfight explodes. It begins on November 1, 1950, an unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00 P.M. in his temporary residence at Blair House, the president of the United States takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M., two men approach Blair House from different directions. Oscar Collazo, a respected metal polisher and family man, and Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman, don't look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent cannot guess is that under each man's coat is a 9mm German automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin's glory. At point-blank range, Collazo and then Torresola draw and fire and move toward the president of the United States. Hunter and Bainbridge tell the story of that November day with narrative power and careful attention to detail. They are the first to report on the inner workings of this conspiracy; they examine the forces that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors also tell the story of the men themselves, from their youth and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted. Their telling commemorates heroism -- the quiet commitment to duty that in some moments of crisis sees some people through an ordeal, even at the expense of their lives. "

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