The Press: Truman's Memoirs

The big guessing game in U.S. publishing has been: Who will get the memoirs of former President Harry Truman? Last week LIFE copped the prize. In Kansas City Harry Truman announced that LIFE had bought all rights to his memoirs, both for magazine serialization and book publication. LIFE, which paid well over $500,000 for the memoirs, plans to start serializing them in late 1954, expects to sell the book rights for later publication. Truman said that LIFE made the "best offer" of about a "dozen or maybe more" bidders. He said he picked LIFE because "I have observed that LIFE editors have presented other memoirs [Churchill, Duke of Windsor, General Omar Bradley] with great dignity and care." In writing the memoirs, which he says are more than half finished, Truman will be helped by William Hillman, former newsman (I.N.S., Mutual Broadcasting) and author of Mr. President, a collection of Truman papers and reminiscences published last year. Although Hillman and others will help him gather the material for his memoirs, Harry Truman says: "I am writing them myself."