"American Gunfight"

[seamus]

I just bought this book which is about the attempted assassination of Harry S. Truman by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1950. It is written by Stephen Hunter & John Bainbridge and I would recommend for anyone who likes to study "unknown" history.

[TylerDurden]

Originally posted by seamus
I just bought this book which is about the attempted assassination of Harry S. Truman by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1950. It is written by Stephen Hunter & John Bainbridge and I would recommend for anyone who likes to study "unknown" history.


I work in a bookstore, and I read the advance copy as soon as it arrived. An interesting piece of American history, I knew almost nothing about the assassination attempt before reading this book.

The secret service agents and white house police sound like stand up guys, the kind of men one would want protecting the president.

If anyone wants to read this, let me know. I'll send you my advance copy.

[seamus]

What was the name of the secret service officer who shot the remaining assassin? It was really stirring to read about him literally shooting the guy while on his last legs. (I already loaned the book to one of my friends)

[Baba Louie]

From the Truman Library files...
Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to assassinate President Truman on November 1, 1950. They arrived in Washington D.C. the day before from the Bronx in New York City, where they were active in the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. They thought the assassination would call attention to Puerto Rico and advance the cause of Puerto Rican independence.

On the morning of November 1, they prepared for the assault. Torresola, a skilled gunman, taught Collazo how to load and handle a gun. They familiarized themselves with the area near Blair House, across the street from the White House, where they would stage the assault. (The Truman family stayed in the Blair House during renovation of the White House from 1948 to 1952). Collazo and Torresola planned to approach the house from opposite directions and shoot their way inside. In the ensuing gun battle, Collazo and Torresola traded gunfire with White House policemen and secret service agents. They wounded three White House policemen but never reached the interior of the house. One of the wounded policemen, Private Leslie Coffelt, managed to fire one bullet and hit Torresola in the side of the head, killing him instantly. Coffelt died later that day at the hospital. Two other policemen, Donald Birdzell and Joseph Downs, were each hit more than once but recovered from their wounds. Collazo reached the steps of Blair House before collapsing with a gunshot wound to the chest. It was later found that only one shot fired by Collazo had hit anyone—his first shot, which wounded Private Birdzell. Torresola had inflicted all the other gunshot wounds on the three White House policemen. President Truman was taking a nap upstairs in Blair House when the shooting began. He rushed to a window and saw Collazo below on the front steps. A White House guard saw the President in the window and shouted to him to him to get down. The President obeyed.

Collazo was sentenced to death for the attempt; one week before his scheduled execution in 1952, Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. President Carter commuted the life sentence of Collazo in September 1979, and he was freed from prison. He died in Puerto Rico on February 20, 1994 at the age of 80.

[Mister B]

It's a good read, sort of a non-fiction version of his fiction books. It was shocking to see how lax the security was around the president. Hunter seems to have interests in the civil unrest in South America and unethical medical experimentation.

I hope for his next book he tells the story of Earl Swagger's father, the WWI hero/corrupt town sherrif.

[John Bennett]

Originally posted by Baba Louie One of the wounded policemen, Private Leslie Coffelt, managed to fire one bullet and hit Torresola in the side of the head, killing him instantly. Coffelt died later that day at the hospital.

Good shot.

[seamus]

I just bought the March/April edition of American Handgunner and Massad Ayoob has an excellent review of the book in his Ayoob Files column in which he writes "Stephen Hunter, the novelist and newspaper columnist who's been profiled in American Handgunner before. Perhaps the most "gun literate" of current fiction writers, Hunter joined with John Bainbridge, Jr. to write a compelling non-fiction book titled American Gunfight: The Plot To Kill Harry Truman - And The Shoot out That Stopped It. Superbly researched, American Gunfight is the best book I've read in 2005, and in a way, this installment of Ayoob Files is one long homage to the work of Hunter and Bainbridge."
That's a pretty good endorsement of the book Kids! You can all thank me for bringing it to your attention.:cool:

[Checkman]

Excellent read. Picked up two days ago and I've already finished it. I'm a fan of Stephen Hunter so I was curious to see how he would do with a work of non-fiction. While he wrote it from the perspective of a novelist I still found it engrossing. A very good training tool as well. I plan on using it whne I do my basic handgun training with the department's new hires.