PHOTO ARTICLE: The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library

This week I’m on a flying visit to the states, because the National WWI Museum in Kansas City were lovely enough to give Nicolai and I a launch event for the US edition of Ring of Fire. More on that at the end of the week, but yesterday, before we despatched him on a plane back to Denmark, we left the city to pay a visit to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri. For those of you that aren’t aware of these institutions, I wanted to highlight them, but I also wanted to share some of the excellent material on display since their recent revamp…

According to the US National Archives, there are sixteen Presidential Libraries. They also comprise archives and museum space dedicated to the most recent men to have occupied the oval office, and facilitate education and discussion, ‘without regard for political considerations or affiliations.’ Prior to the Second World War, huge volumes of papers and artefacts relating to American Presidents had been pilfered, destroyed, sold, lost or ruined thanks to bad storage. Eventually, in 1955, Congress passed legislation in the shape of the Presidential Libraries Act and regulated the preservation and presentation of this material for the benefit of the American people. In all, again, according to the National Archives, across the sixteen are held 'over 600 million pages of textual materials; nearly 20 million photographs; over 20 million feet of motion picture film; nearly 100,000 hours of disc, audiotape, and videotape recordings; over 500 TB of electronic data, and close to 750,000 museum objects.’

Of course, the collections are led by the papers created by the given President and his staff whilst he is in office, but they also house ‘numerous museum objects which may include family heirlooms, items collected by the President and his family, campaign memorabilia, awards, and the many gifts given to the President by American citizens and foreign dignitaries. These gifts range in type from homemade items to valuable works of art. Curators in Presidential libraries and in other museums throughout the country draw upon these collections for historical exhibits.’ Then you have donations from people who came into contact with the President in question, such as ‘cabinet officials, envoys to foreign governments, political party associates, and the President's family and personal friends.’ Some of the libraries have even carried out oral history projects to preserve memory, and then, lastly, you have everything that a President might have accumulated from other people in the course not only of his time in office, but throughout his life.

Harry S. Truman was President of the United States from 1945, when FDR died in office in the midst of the Second World War, until 1953. He is best remembered for being the man at the helm when America fully ushered in the nuclear age by unleashing these monstrous new weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to bring about the unconditional surrender of Japan and finally put an end to the war. His ascent was pretty rapid, and for a simple man from Missouri, who had struggled to find a foothold in the world in the first half of the 20th Century, it was probably unexpected. Here are some images from the Truman Presidential Library that detail his life and career, and his most controversial moment…