American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman - and the Shoot-out that Stopped It

Riverside, New Jersey, U.S.A.: Simon & Schuster, 2005. First Printing . Hard Back. Near Fine/Very Good. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. 368 Pages Indexed. Dark gray boards with black tape quarter-spine and silver letteriing. Black remainder mark on bottom page edges. No other marks or stamps to this tight book with a faultless interior. On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican Nationalists named Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola pulled German automatic pistols and attempted to storm Blair House, at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., where the president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, was at that moment-2:20 P.M. on an abnormally hot Wednesday-taking a nap in his underwear. They were opposed by a three-man Secret Service detail and four White House Police officers. In the brief exchange -- under forty seconds-between twenty-nine and thirty-one shots were fired in an area about ninety feet by twenty feet, though the exchange broke into two actions at either end of the property, where the ranges were much shorter. When it was over one man was dead, another was dying, and two more were seriously injured. The story was of course gigantic news-for about a week. What's remarkable about it is not how big a story it was but how quickly it went away. Today, few Americans even remember it. If they do, it always encompasses the following points: The grievances Oscar and Griselio were expressing were fundamentally absurd: Puerto Rico had been given the gift of United States culture and political traditions and was rapidly becoming Americanized, as it should be. In Washington, the two gunmen further expressed their deep state of mental disorganization by acting in strange ways. In the actual fight itself, the Secret Service and the White House policemen essentially brushed them aside. The two never came close to getting into Blair House. And even if they had, it would have made no difference as an agent with a tommy gun was waiting just inside the door. Harry Truman was never in any mortal danger. There is only one problem with assigning these meanings to the 38 desperate, violent seconds of November 1, 1950. Every single one of them is wrong.