Astral Codex Ten

Truman

4 min read

Truman

Article

Truman is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 24, 2022 and September 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “MacArthur… before he was fired by Truman”; “MacArthur … before he was fired by Truman”; “biographies about Grant, Roosevelt, and Truman”. It most often appears alongside CIA, Astralcodexten Com, Bush.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: June 24, 2022
  • Last seen: September 19, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy
June 24, 2022 · Original source
boxing in the president’s major foreign policy decision via military generals’ press manipulation (MacArthur commenting on escalating engagement in the Korean War before he was fired by Truman; top generals in the Obama administration publicly discussing troop commitment needed to win in Afghanistan)
Your Book Review: The Outlier
July 08, 2022 · Original source
But I wondered what, if any, hidden depths lay within the peanut farmer. Also, I wanted to enter this contest, and I didn’t want to pick a book that I thought a bunch of other people might also review. So I turned to The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, by Kai Bird. Like Carter, this book seems to have been largely forgotten. It won a Pulitzer, but I had never heard of it until I googled “best book about Jimmy Carter.” It seems to have gotten a lot less attention than similar recent biographies about Grant, Roosevelt, and Truman, and it’s hard to imagine it ever becoming a TV show or a musical.
Inline links: The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter
The first answer is, you micromanage to a spectacular degree. Alone among all presidents since Truman, Carter refuses to appoint a Chief of Staff. He then immediately demonstrates why he needs one by involving himself in a comical number of minor decisions, including personally deciding which magazine subscriptions his speechwriting team should get, cutting down on the amount of food served at breakfast with congressional leaders, and canceling car service for his staff because it’ll save $92,000 of the $409 billion federal budget. Oh, and he also insists that all White House thermostats be set at 65° (55° at night), though this last mandate is eventually rescinded when the staff—some of whom are so cold they’ve been typing with gloves on—rebel.
Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been
September 19, 2025 · Original source
Bush never did much to make his memex a reality. He was too busy building the National Science Foundation and trying to prevent a nuclear arms race. He had no time to fiddle around with desk-sized personal libraries, fighting Truman’s hawkish hyperfocus on hydrogen warheads.