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Louis Johnson and the Arming of America: The Roosevelt and Truman Fears. By Keith D. McFarland and David L. Roll. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-253-34626-6. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 452. $35.00.
Keith D. McFarland published Harry H. Woodring: A Political Biography of FDR's Controversial secretary of War in 1975. He then drafted a study of Louis A. Johnson, Woodring's assistant secretary and later secretary of defense under Harry S. Truman, but had to put it aside in the 1980s because of administrative duties (he is now the president of Texas Ë&Ì University-Commerce). In 2001 he joined with David L. Roll, a partner at Johnson's law firm, Steptoe & Johnson, to produce Louis Johnson and the Arming of America.
McFarland and Roll concisely cover their protagonist's early years in Virginia, his career as a West Virginia lawyer and state legislator, and his service in the American Expeditionary Forces, where he met Truman and became...