Dear Harry: Truman's Mailroom, 1945-1953 (review)

Book Reviews 285 War, its legacy is still with us. The military budget never returned to the low levels seen between 1946 and 1950. The mobilization also had far-reaching effects on the geography of American industry and the role of military production in the economy . Furthermore, Pierpaoli rightly notes that the military buildup increased the power of the most secretive and least democratic part of the American state, the national security establishment. While Harry Truman had ambivalent feelings about the military buildup, it is clearly one of the most important legacies of his presidency. Pierpaoli deserves credit for helping to bring it back to our attention. As the author notes, this book is among the first in-depth treatments of the impact of the Korean War mobilization on the American political economy. As such, it is not surprising that Truman and Korea leaves a few important questions without satisfactory answers. One example is its treatment of popular attitudes toward the mobilization program. At several points, the book refers to public dissatisfaction with the economic controls contributing to pressure for their removal (173, 177). However, the only two polls Pierpaoli mentions both indicated support for wage and price controls (203, 219). One wonders what the public really thought about the mobilization effort. While Truman was unpopular by the end of his presidency, the mobilization effort was probably not the source of his downfall. The way is open for future research in this area. In sum, this is a good book on a very important and understudied topic. Pierpaoli can and does point to many effects of the mobilization program that remain with us today, even though the Cold War (to say nothing of the Korean War) has ended. While it may not be a book about political culture, per se, those interested in the political culture of the Cold War would do well to consider the impact on American life of the sweeping changes in the political economy set out in this book. Benjamin O. Fordham University at Albany, S. U.N. Y Dear Harry: Truman's Mailroom, 1945-1953. By D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1999, pp. xvi + 512. $34.95. The Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, opened its doors, so to speak, with a dedication in 1957, and over the years has become well known to scholars of the presidency. It is an interesting fact that one of the first bodies of material that became available, and which only now has really been exploited, was what one might describe as the Truman mailroom. The president of 1945-53 received letters from across the country, letters too numerous to count, mailbags of them. To be sure, his staff answered most of them, and those that bore either political danger or came from such individuals that they simply had to be answered with care were indeed taken in hand by the president's correspondence secretary, William D. Hassett—known within the White House staff as "the bishop" because of his 286 Rhetoric & Public Affairs courtly manner. Hassett had functioned in a similar capacity for Truman's predecessor , Franklin D. Roosevelt. But it is not so well known that Truman himself took on some of the general correspondence. Any member of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery Regiment, received special treatment, his letter separated immediately from the generality. And the president liked to dip into the mail. For the most part his replies were careful, as they should have been. For subjects that engaged him the results occasionally were spectacularly different, as D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore show. The range of letters that the editors have addressed is remarkable, and they not merely have divided letters into topical categories but annotated them—this is no simple compilation, one letter after another. Each chapter has a discussion of issues and of the Truman outlooks. The categories are the stands the president made during his nearly eight years in the nation's highest office: the end of World War II, including the Potsdam Conference and the nuclear bombs, Korea, the MacArthur dismissal, as well as such domestic issues as civil rights, the 1948 election, Senator Joseph...