American Gunfight Audiobook By Stephen Hunter, John Bainbridge cover art

American Gunfight

The Plot to Kill Harry Truman and the Shoot-Out That Stopped It

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

American Gunfight

By: Stephen Hunter, John Bainbridge
Narrated by: John H. Mayer
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.25

Buy for $20.25

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel
American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event: the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C., that saved the president's life.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Hunter, the widely admired and best-selling novelist and author of such books as Havana, Hot Springs, and Dirty White Boys, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of an act of terrorism that almost succeeded. They have pieced together, at last, the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the president and how a few good men, ordinary guys who were willing to risk their lives in the line of duty, stopped it.

©2005 Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc. Americas Politics & Government United States

Critic reviews

"It will captivate readers interested in the crime and the killers' motivations." (Booklist)
"Not only convincing but compelling." (Publishers Weekly)

People who viewed this also viewed...

Point of Impact Audiobook By Stephen Hunter cover art
Point of Impact By: Stephen Hunter
Hot Springs Audiobook By Stephen Hunter cover art
Hot Springs By: Stephen Hunter
All stars
Most relevant  
I enjoy detail as much as anyone, but the authors of American Gunfight took detail way to the extreme. The actions of the police and secret service agents were interesting- their performance in the high school football game or their first job wasn't. A very interesting event that would have made a very interesting book if it was about half the length.

Some very tight editing would have helped a lot!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This was a very long book about an event that took 38 seconds. Gives a good understanding of the Nationalist movement in Puerto Rico. The book can be a frustrating listen since it will go into hour long side stories about the participants in the shooting.

Worth the listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting for lovers of detail; fascinating history of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the US. Well read. The title is somewhat misleading because the gunfight took less than one minute. The story was really about the many individuals involved and the political atmosphere.

Fascinating Description

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is a wonderful surprise. The author takes an episode from history (the attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman) and gives it up-to-date relevance and edge-of-your-seat suspense. I've never read a book that takes 10 seconds of an event and turns it into an entire chapter. "American Gunfight" shows just how little we've progressed in the past 55 years. It's a must read that makes for sober wonderment at man's ability to frustrate the best in himself.

Spellbinding History

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is much less a work of fiction than a journalistic retelling with the add on of what may have been. At no time do the authors ever assert that their colouring of the journalism is true, instead calling it out plainly and basing it on the facts as available. I learned a great deal about America in the late 40s and early 50s and the book gave me a perspective on Puerto Rico that I would otherwise never have seen. Fascinating!

A piece of history revealed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An excellent topic that is not treated well. I believe that the author just likes to see his words (as many as possible)in print. Ambles constantly which made it very difficult to follow. I found that it could not hold my attention.

Scattered

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
VERY VERY hard to listen to the whole thing....Way too much detail! I'm from Independence Missouri, hometown of Harry Truman and I could barely get through it....sorry!

WAAAAAAY TOO MUCH DETAIL...ACK!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The plot traces the lives not just of the main players, but those of only historical significance. It spends pages describing the personal dress and daily pursuits of the characters. The story line jumps and dances around relevant facts and actions mixing in barely related events and characters. The story is simple and probably not meaty enough to base a book solely on the events. A great deal of filler was necessary to make a full book.
I like Hunter's other works, read just about all of them. None are like this. Fortunately.

whole story could have been told in 50 pages

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Like listening to grass grow. Very ponderous-how many times can you hear about how policemen tie their ties. It stretches 15 minutes of fame into 15 hours.

tedious

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is absolutely the most tedious thing I ever tried to listen to. I had listened to another Stephen Hunter book, so I tried this. Could NOT finish it.

an american gunfight

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews