Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
New York: Berkley Publishing Corp. 1974. Book Club Edition [?]. Hardcover. 448 pages. Footnotes. Index, some soiling to fore-edge, binding somewhat shaken, DJ foxed & worn: small tears, small pieces missing. Plain Speaking is based on conversations between Miller and the President Truman, as well as others who knew Truman over the years. Robert A. Aurthur said, "No one will ever study or write about the time of Truman again without a bow of gratitude to Merle Miller. Never has a President of the United States, or any head of state for that matter, been so totally revealed, so completely documented...." Merle Dale Miller (May 17, 1919 – June 10, 1986) was an American author who is perhaps best remembered for his best-selling biography of Harry S. Truman, and as a pioneer in the gay rights movement. He was editor of both Harper and Time magazines. He also worked as a book reviewer for The Saturday Review of Literature and as a contributing editor for The Nation. His work appeared frequently in the New York Times Magazine. His works of nonfiction include We Dropped the A-Bomb (1946), a book he wrote in collaboration with Abe Spitzer, a radioman who was on the bomber The Great Artiste, one of the B-29s that dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Miller came out of the closet in an article in the New York Times Magazine on January 17, 1971, "What It Means to Be a Homosexual." The response of over 2,000 letters to the article, more than ever received by that newspaper, led to a book publication that year. The book was reprinted by Penguin Classics in 2012, with a new foreword by Dan Savage and a new afterword by Charles Kaiser. More