Truman and Picasso were contemporaries and were both shaped by and shapers of the great events of the twentieth century--the man who painted Guernica and the man who authorized the use of atomic bombs against civilians.
But in most ways, they couldn't have been more different. Picasso was a communist, and probably the only thing Harry Truman hated more than communists was modern art. Picasso was an indifferent father, a womanizer,...