Southern Jackson County still shelters the white and green farmhouse Harry S Truman occupied in the days before his journey to the presidency. Truman moved to the farm in 1906 at the age of twenty-two, and after his father died in 1914, he shouldered the duties of a six-hundred-acre farm until he enlisted to serve in World War I. It was here that his nine-year courtship with Bess Wallace blossomed through the letters the couple exchanged from Grandview and Independence and through her occasional visits to the farm. Drawing on photographs, letters and even farm receipts, historian Jon Taylor pieces together a picture of the man from Missouri whose humble beginnings prepared him to lead the country.