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Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Leffler states that Truman the realist understood the world around him, and his administration, despite costly errors, protected America's national security against the Soviet threat. Other works look at Truman's foreign policy decisions as individual events.
As for all presidents, Harry Truman's decisions, including those regarding the atomic bomb and the coming of the Cold War, have been second guessed time and again. Harry Truman before all else in history was a politician, and much of the history surrounding him examines him as just that.

Truman noted by many as simply the man between Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, governed a rapidly changing nation in a delicate time. How Truman dealt with the challenges that faced him is the subject of many of the great works in his historiography.
Frank McNaughton and Walter Hehmeyer wrote the first seriously taken biography of Harry S. Truman. Published in 1948, the focus of this work is the events surrounding Truman's first months in office, especially the reaction to Truman taking office and the many comparisons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harold F. Gosnell's Truman's Crises is a political look at the presidency of Harry Truman. Gosnell does not delve into Truman's mind or his background but described the events that surrounded Truman's years in office from a political scientist's point of view.There are those that also looked at Truman's leadership style. Robert Underhill's The Truman Persuasions main theme is that even though Harry Truman lacked political eloquence, he was an effective persuader. Published in 1981, Underhill examined how Truman navigated a less than supportive Congress.
Despite the fact that Harry Truman left the White House with one of the lowest approval ratings of any President in history, Truman has become one of the most quoted and researched figures in American history. A major factor of why Truman has been such a prominent figure in history is the perception of who Harry Truman was and where he came from.
Harry Truman wrote two volumes of memoirs commenting on his life and years as president. Though important to the understanding of who Truman was and why he made his decision, any memoir is dangerous as an historical source because the author will only reveal what he wants to reveal. Truman himself stated in the preface to his first memoir, "For reasons of national security and out of consideration for some people still alive,

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