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Truman!

Go ahead.

Oh, Harry Truman. Well, now, that was rather amusing, because Harry [Luce], in particular, had always been very critical of Truman in the first place. Henry Luce was very mad when Dewey got beaten by Truman. He, Luce, had a low opinion of Truman, I think, from the very start. You can see in part why--because of Truman's background and the Pendergast machine and all that, which everybody had doubts about. Also, who had heard of Truman? By then, very little other than one Senate investigation in World War II.

But, anyway, when Truman's term drew to a close, we got in touch with him. I forget what the first effort was. I know that Ed Thompson and I went down to Washington to talk with Harry about writing his memoirs. And he seemed perfectly willing to write his memoirs, but he was very uncertain--rightly, as it turned out--about his ability to write and how much. The sticking point in this contract was not the money, which turned out, I believe, to be $600,000 over five years--and he got a tax ruling that could spread it. It was not the money, the sticking point, but we had to sort of characterize this book, as you do any book, in terms of how many volumes, or how many words, and what have you. And Truman absolutely refused to commit himself to write more than a hundred thousand words. Well, a hundred thousand words is not very much, particularly to tell the story of a tumultuous Presidency of six years, plus his whole background, which was very unusual. I mean,