This is the astonishing story of Bess W. Truman and her love for her husband, Harry, as only their daughter could tell it. Bess W. Truman is more than a rare, intimate, and surprising portrait of a famous First Lady, it is also the heartwarming story of an enduing love and a remarkable political partnership. Margaret Truman has been able to draw on her own personal reminiscences and a treasure trove of 1,000 letters from Bess and several hundred from Harry, never before published.

For the first time, Margaret Truman reveals the strong role her mother played in harry Truman's important political decisions -- during his ascent to the Senate, the Vice-Presidency, and to the White House itself. And we see history from the inside out as the lives of Harry and Bess evoke the great events of the Truman era: dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the stunning upset of Thomas Dewey, the firing of Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War, the vicious McCarthy hearings, and more. Bess W. Truman recreates the human drama of an extraordinary woman and a man who became a beloved American president.