The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

An original and penetrating assessment of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, showing Ike’s enormous influence on modern America, the Cold War, and on the presidency itself.

In a 2017 survey, presidential historians ranked Dwight D. Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, behind the perennial top four: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Teddy Roosevelt. Historian William Hitchcock shows that this high ranking is justified. Eisenhower’s accomplishments were enormous, and loom ever larger from the vantage point of our own tumultuous times. A former general, Ike kept the peace: he ended the Korean War, avoided a war in Vietnam, adroitly managed a potential confrontation with China, and soothed relations with the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. He guided the Republican Party to embrace central aspects of the New Deal like Social Security. He thwarted the demagoguery of McCarthy and he advanced the agenda of civil rights for African Americans. As part of his strategy to wage, and win, the Cold War, Eisenhower expanded American military power, built a fearsome nuclear arsenal and launched the space race. In his famous Farewell Address, he acknowledged that Americans needed such weapons in order to keep global peace—but he also admonished his citizens to remain alert to the potentially harmful influence of the “military-industrial complex.”

From 1953 to 1961 no one dominated the world stage as did President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Age of Eisenhower is the definitive account of this presidency, drawing extensively on declassified material from the Eisenhower Library, the CIA and Defense Department, and troves of unpublished documents. In his masterful account, Hitchcock shows how Ike shaped modern America, and he astutely assesses Eisenhower’s close confidants, from Attorney General Brownell to Secretary of State Dulles. The result is an eye-opening reevaluation that explains why this “do-nothing” president is rightly regarded as one of the best leaders our country has ever had.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, Presidents, Politics, Biography Memoir

672 pages, Hardcover

First published March 20, 2018

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“No wonder…that Americans loved Ike. He was big enough to embody their collective hopes and dreams. He was a Texan, a Kansan, a Coloradan, and a New Yorker; a soldier and a peacemaker; a poor country boy and a wealthy elitist; a devoted reader of Scripture who seldom went to church until he was 62; a beer-and-hot dog man who feted his powerful White House guests with pheasant under glass. With his example in mind, Americans could aspire to riches, power, and personal success without losing their moral compass. They could earnestly talk up the importance of bootstraps and personal responsibility while demanding that their government care for them. They could embrace change and modernity while also venerating their elders and attending church in record-breaking numbers. Here lie the elements of the Eisenhower phenomenon: by personifying and reconciling these contradictions, he made Americans believe that they, like him, could have it all…”
- William I Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

I expected William Hitchcock’s The Age of Eisenhower to be good. Nonetheless, I had a bit of trepidation when I picked it up. America in the 1950s exists in the collective memory as a middle-class idyll of prosperity and stability; of manicured neighborhoods and picket fences; of dad at the office and mom in the kitchen; of Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best. It is often recalled as the nearest embodiment of the American Dream, lorded over by everybody’s grandpa, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Sandwiched between the literal wars of the 1940s and early 50s, and the cultural wars of the mid-60s, the Eisenhower years are usually lauded for their peace, stability, and economic successes.

Of course, below the surface, the 50s were as tumultuous as any other decade. Millions of women who’d entered the workforce during World War II were now being shunted back into their homes. In the aftermath of a global conflict to free the world, many parts of America were still legally segregated between black and white. Meanwhile, the opposing forces of the Cold War continued to devise ever more powerful nuclear weapons, along with cleverer ways of delivering them. With so much conflict roiling beneath the surface, I had little interest in an Eisenhower panegyric, a paean to the false centrism that exists when everybody is told (or forced) to stay in their lanes.

Thus, I was surprised at how much I liked The Age of Eisenhower. It is, to be sure, a laudatory account of America’s 34th president. Hitchcock believes that Eisenhower belongs at the lower end of the top-tier of U.S. chief executives (he puts him at number five, below Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and Teddy). At the same time, he is extremely critical of many of Ike’s decisions. Hitchcock’s blunt honesty, critical recognition, and refusal to make excuses adds up to a book that feels true. More than that, it makes his case far more effectively than if he tried to explain away every bad call or ill-conceived notion or occasional coup (and there were many bad calls, ill-conceived notions, and occasional coups).

The Age of Eisenhower is not an Eisenhower biography. Also, notwithstanding the subtitle, it is not a broad overview of the 1950s. While it provides a very brief (less than a hundred pages) sketch of Ike’s background, its real focus is on the two terms of Ike’s presidency. And despite the lack of a really signature moment, it was an eventful eight years: Brown vs. Board, the Voting Rights Act, and the 82nd Airborne in Little Rock; the French retreat in Indochina, the overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq in Iran, and the Domino Theory in action; Sputnik, the Missile Gap, and the downing of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane. (In other words, roughly the first half of Billy Joel’s We Didn't Start the Fire).

The Age of Eisenhower is 517 pages long (not including endnotes and index). This is not very long relative to the expansiveness of the subject matter, but Hitchcock makes it work. His great achievement here is in his presentation. His marshalling of information is marvelous. He utilizes a sort of hybrid structure, where the narrative proceeds in rough chronological fashion, but with most of the chapters devoted to a single theme. For example, Hitchcock devotes two different chapters, one in each term, entirely to Eisenhower’s handling of race issues, especially with regards to the fallout from the Brown decision overturning the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

Hitchcock is also a really good storyteller. He is able to take complex events and boil them down to their essence, and to do so in an entertaining and engaging fashion. For instance, his chapter on the Suez crisis, of which I had only a passing familiarity, is mesmerizing.

Above all, though, I appreciated Hitchcock’s judgment. I wouldn’t expect him to write a book about Eisenhower if he didn't respect him, like him, even love him. And he does. But he isn’t fawning, he isn’t obsequious, and he certainly didn't sign up to be Ike’s posthumous defense attorney. He provides context, he provides explanations, but he never makes excuses. This allows him to come to reasoned deductions.

On race, for example, he gives Eisenhower good marks overall. He backed the Brown decision in the face of serious (and seriously ugly) opposition, to the extent that he used Federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court’s edict. He also (with the help of Attorney General Herbert Brownell) helped pass the first civil rights legislation in decades. That does not change the fact, however, that Ike hesitated to use the bully pulpit of his office in support of a righteous cause. To the contrary, most of his public statements seemed blinded by his own privilege (accusing the NAACP of moving too quickly, as though equality could wait another generation or two) or showed the weakness of his philosophical thinking (he kept repeating, as though it made any sense, that laws alone could not change the “hearts of men,” which managed to be both false and a terrible excuse for not passing more protective legislation). There is the notion that the Oval Office has a moral weight; unfortunately, Ike was too ensconced at Augusta's private (and segregated) golf club to use that moral force to improve race relations.

Hitchcock also has major reservations about Eisenhower’s role in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Cuba. Much of what Ike did simply set the stage for other American presidents – JFK, LBJ, Nixon – to make their tragic pratfalls. Yet he also engaged in a lot of lethal meddling through the CIA, while also building up the military-industrial complex he later famously warned about. (Hitchcock also suggests, a bit frighteningly, that Ike’s nuclear threats were never bluffs, but were demonstrations of an early misconception about the nature of the weapons as an extension of conventional arms).

Eisenhower is a meteor, brilliant and rare. His pedigree as world-historical general existing above the fray of politics is not easily repeatable. Even less repeatable – it seems – is Eisenhower’s ability to govern from the center, with practicality instead of dogma. Though often viewed by contemporaries as detached and more concerned with his putting than governing, Ike’s reputation has slowly risen with time.

Still, I’m not entirely sure that Eisenhower, for all his qualities, deserves to have an “Age” to his name. Though he spoke a small government game, he made no effort to dismantle the New Deal, so that in real ways, his administration existed in the shadow of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Moreover, he wasn’t a doctrinaire conservative, and never transformed the Republican Party in his own image (or even managed to lift Republican congressional fortunes). Instead, the modern GOP was birthed by others, such as Goldwater and Reagan, with more rigid and uncompromising ideologies. Certainly, as Hitchcock shows, he set a lot of things in motion – often unintentionally – but he wasn’t there when the wheel went round.

Agreeing with Hitchcock’s ultimate conclusion is not necessary to enjoy The Age of Eisenhower. Far more important is that provides a balanced portrait that makes its points without needlessly distorting the historical record or turning this into a desperate apologetic. On top of that, it is a joy to read.

[ALLEN · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion this biography is the right thing at the right time, and a joy to read. Unlike other popular biographies, William I. Hitchcock's The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s does not linger on Ike's upbringing and military service: indeed, a mere 46 pages of text take us up to his 60th birth year, when he's retired from the Army, President of Columbia University, and seriously mulling running for President on the Republican ticket in 1952. Ike's candidacy and two administrations -- and John F. Kennedy's ensuing debt to Eisenhower, for good and bad, in foreign and domestic policy -- occupy the rest of the book. I count it a plus that Ike's pretty English chauffeur, Kay Summersby, rates only a brief mention here and is not subject to the "Did they or didn't they" dithering of some earlier womb-to-tomb bios.

Author Hitchcock, aided by recent research and declassifications, gets into areas of Ike's two presidential terms that are usually covered only sketchily in other mainstream biographies: I was especially impressed by his handling of the Emmett Till case in the context of domestic race relations, and the details given to two CIA-inspired (and Eisenhower-approved) military overthrows of democratic, civilian governments in 1953 in Guatemala and Iran, the two heads of state overthrown being thought too "pink" for CIA tastes. While the author is clearly in tune with Ike's moderation, his so-called "Modern Republicanism," he does deplore the extent to which the President equipped the new CIA, put John Foster Dulles' brilliant but erratic brother Allan at the top, and maintained a policy of "plausible deniability" when the CIA shifted into regime change. In effect, "The Agency" quickly became a subtle and insidious "Covert War Department" virtually free from Congressional control.

When author Hitchcock considers Eisenhower's second term, he shows more sympathy regarding foreign policy. Hitchcock makes us especially aware of a key irony: the aging President was partly the victim of his own success, making his foreign-policy efforts look so effortless, when with half-a-century's hindsight they clearly weren't. Ike's cleverness in maintaining an anti-Communist tone while avoiding armed conflict, compounded by his celebrated ability to make the very difficult look easy, set up some easy carping from the Democrats that led straight to the 1960 Presidential election. In 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy, making hay of the periodic flap of two small Taiwanese islands near the Chinese mainland, opined: "We have teetered on the brink of foreign wars no American wants or can explain," after which Hitchcock ripostes: "commented Senator Kennedy, a future architect of America's war in Vietnam."

In the spring of 1960, when Francis Gary Power's covert U-2 surveillance flight over the U.S.S.R. was shot down, two different agencies in Ike's administration lied about it using two different -- and incompatible -- cover stories. The President who wished for posterity to remember him as a man who had never directly lied to the American people was suddenly caught in two huge whoppers. This did not guarantee Kennedy's presidential win over Richard Nixon later that year, but it did add credence to the notion that fresh blood was needed in the White House.

I think that THE AGE OF EISENHOWER is going to be the go-to in modern one-volume history of Eisenhower's Presidency for some time to come. While not afraid to sound Ike out on the missteps, Hitchcock establishes very well Eisenhower's considerable achievements (not least of them keeping the USA out of major wars) -- and effectively rebutting the lingering charge that Ike stared down the "green fairways of indifference" during his two terms. This book doesn't exactly crackle with humor, but Hitchcock does bring to his skillful and adroit narrative a hawk eye for irony, and knows how to integrate reminiscence and anecdote without distracting from the main course of events. It is true that Hitchcock fast-forwards over the first 60 years of the soldier/statesman's life, but we already have Jean Edward Smith's well-wrought EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE (2013), which is an excellent foundation for "Ike's" youth and military career.

After reading this well researched and incisive volume, most readers will surely agree with William Hitchcock's conclusion that:

Americans viewed Eisenhower as a legendary hero even before he entered politics, and his time in the White House strengthened his reputation as a man of integrity. He gave his life to public service in war and peace, and his administration was remarkably free from scandal.

It is for us 21st-Century Americans to figure out what became of "Modern Republicanism," and where the virtues, such as they are, are to be found in the current Republican Party.

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[T]he Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it.” Americans wanted the government to act as a safety net. “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” A few “Texas oil millionaires” and the occasional hard-liner might still oppose social security. But, he said, in memorably blunt terms, “their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Dwight Eisenhower as quoted in The Age of Eisenhower by William F. Hitchcock. page 259.

In the 1954 midterm elections, given his high approval ratings and the significant achievements of his first two years, Eisenhower had expected Republican victories. He had ended the war in Korea, his administration had achieved improvements in infrastructure, housing, health care, and social security. He and Nixon campaigned hard during the fall of 1954, however, the election resulted in the lost of control of both the House and Senate.

In a postmortem, Eisenhower and some of his advisers came to the conclusion that the Republican Party was in danger. The party was divided between far-right conservatives and moderates. If the GOP was to have a chance at winning majorities in the future, it had to embrace the “progressive moderates”. He sought generous and humane solutions to social problems within a framework of fiscal restraint. He contemplated forming a new party that would embrace “the Middle Way”. A party made up of “internationalists in foreign policy, fiscal conservatives who wanted a balanced budget, and social liberals who understood the need for a basic safety net to catch those who,’through no fault of their own, suddenly find themselves poverty -stricken’.” A party positioned between "those who wanted socialism and those who wanted to eliminate everything the Federal Government has ever done.” “Mere hostility to government was not a winning formula.” (Pages 266-267)

The decade of the fifties was a watershed for civil rights. This decade saw the murder of Emmett Till, the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools, the arrival of Martin Luther King Jr., the arrest of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, and the confrontation between President Eisenhower and Governor Faubus of Arkansas over the desegregation of a Little Rock high school.

This book is not a history of the civil rights movement, but it is a report of how President Eisenhower handled these events. The author notes his failure to oppose more strongly racial segregation, however, it is also noted he did end segregation in the District of Columbia and the armed forces.

The single most important point of this book for me was that Eisenhower kept us out of war. There were numerous occasions which could have resulted in combat and war if a less competent president had been in office. Eisenhower dealt with these threats in a calm reserved manner as he waited patiently for things to play out. He saw no need for bravado. However, the CIA under Allen Dulles had initiated many covert actions which as they failed and were exposed embarrassed the United States.

This is an excellent history book. The text is extensively footnoted. There is a bibliography of some 400 books which the author used in his research. There is a section at the end where the author describes the books he found most useful for certain topics. He does not pull any punches dismissing some well-known histories, some of which suffered from the recent release of classified information. This section is a treasure trove for anyone wishing further reading of this period. The writing was engaging and never felt like a slog. All this in addition to being about a period that is extraordinarily interesting, at least to me.

This is not a biography of Dwight Eisenhower. It is also not a chronological history of his presidency. The book has been described as thematic in that it is organized by the crises, events and issues of the period. The author does present a mostly favorable portrayal of Eisenhower, but it also describes some of his failures and faults. Most notably his failure to confront Senator Joseph McCathy, and his lack of effort on Civil Rights.

In a nice transition as my reading now enters the 1960s and the presidential administrations of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson is a description of the shift from the Eisenhower presidency to the John Kennedy presidency. Kennedy inherited the situations in Laos and Cuba. He was informed two days before his inauguration of a planned attack by the CIA on the Castro regime in Cuba. Likewise he was informed shortly before taking office that actions were underway to save Laos from communist takeover. It was emphasized that Indonesia could not be allowed to fall to the communists. He had campaigned against Eisenhower’s tolerance of the spread of communism. He was now confronted with plans to address that issue. He was trapped into approving it.

We all know how that turned out.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers the time frame from 1953 to 1961 when Eisenhower was president. Hitchcock does a brief overview of DDE’s early life and military career. I found it helpful when the author provided a review of the various biographies of Eisenhower as well as the most common negative reviews of his presidency. Hitchcock presented different viewpoints of Eisenhower’s handling of the cold war including the U2 incident, when to use atomic weapons and Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower expanded many of FDR’s social programs. He also attempted to obtain health coverage for everyone but was voted down by his own party. I was most impressed with Eisenhower’s self-discipline and organizational skills. He applied this to his presidency, it was considered one of the best organized and disciplined governments to date. When I compare this to what we have today, I wonder how anything gets done today.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. The author had access to newly released Eisenhower papers sent to the Eisenhower presidential library from the federal government. I found this book easy to read, and I think it will become an important read for those wishing to learn about Eisenhower. The book is long enough to allow in-depth analysis and discussion of the author’s key points. This book is not a traditional biography but an analysis of the keys points of DDE’s presidency. If you wish to read a traditional biography, I recommend “Eisenhower in War and Peace” by Jean Edward Smith published in 2013.

I read this book as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. It is almost twenty-six hours long. Arthur Morey does an excellent job narrating the book. Morey is an actor, writer and award-winning audiobook narrator. He has won several EarPhone Awards and as well as receiving two Audie Award nominations.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always thought of Dwight Eisenhower as a great WWII general who carried his natural leadership abilities into the White House where they also served him well as president. In reality his natural abilities were in middle ground politics, and this is the reason he both rose in the ranks of the army and succeeded as president. And he just happened to also turn out to be a great general.

Hitchcock doesn't get too deep into the war days (this is strictly a biography of his presidency), but you can see Ike's knack for showing people what they wanted to see all the way throughout his time in the White House. A perfect example is his performance at the Geneva Summit in 1954 when he knew exactly how to, seemingly offhandedly, present a peace plan that he knew the Russians wouldn't accept, making himself the winner of the whole event.

Interestingly, Hitchcock himself sometimes seems to fall for this - he makes the case in the book that Ike really had a hard time deciding whether or not to run for a second term, and that Ike really thought he was doing Nixon a favor by trying to remove him from the ticket in 1956. Neither of these are likely, and are probably a result of Eishenhower's gift at making people think what he wanted them to think.

Hitchcock does a great job with this book though, and he gives a very thorough look at Eisenhower's eight years as president. Every major event is covered with excellent context (from popular opinion at home to boots on the ground in the areas where everything happened) and Ike's decisions are measured in a very fair and balanced way. When he messed up, you see how. When he succeeds, you see why.

Some notes:
- The chapter on the Suez Canal incident was crazy and would make a great movie.
- I did not know about Ike's health issues during his presidency. Hitchcock covers them well here, giving the perspective from Ike's inner circle, the media, and Nixon as he tries to figure out how best to move (or not move) during the heart attack crisis.
- Eisenhower really did not like Nixon, and their relationship was one of the best parts of the book. Examples - the full story of the "Checkers" speech, the secret message from Mamie Eisenhower to the Nixons in the leadup to the 1960 election.
- The Sputnik parts were really interesting, and I knew nothing about the US' response version - the Corona satellite.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Father of the Fifties

I know that my title may seem a little disrespectful for a man who not only led American and Allied forces to victory in WWII, but also through a successful two term presidency. The 50s was the father knows best era, and Dwight D. Eisenhower led us safely through the reconstruction of Europe even after WWII and then America overwhelmingly desired his care over our nation.

It was repeated over and over throughout this book that Eisenhower was a lonely man, for as much as he often sought the wise counsel of the people he chose for his cabinet, it was his own counsel he ultimately relied upon along with with prayer.

Eisenhower was certainly everything America wanted in their heroes of the time, he was humble and yet as home in a fine club or ballroom as he was in stable or the barracks with recovering troops. He was plain spoken, well educated and had a thorough understanding of economics and the working of the government machine and how its wheels turned… to include who he needed to grease them, and a church goer which was important in the 50s.

This was a fascinating biography, mostly of Eisenhower’s time in the White House and the challenges he faced there. Eisenhower wasn’t a big believer in showing all the workings of diplomacy and how the sausage was made so to speak, and allowed the American people to feel like government was primarily running smoothly with little or no intervention required. Of course, all the work Ike did in the background to make American’s safe was used against him by his replacement in years to come. J. F. Kennedy suggested that Eisenhower’s mode of governing was old and unengaged which couldn’t have been further from the truth.

William I Hitchcock did a wonderful job of laying out the facts without bias, and this was certainly not a fan’s account of a presidency. There are both lauds and criticisms in relatively equal measure, but perhaps more criticism which makes the lauds mean more to me. A great deal happened in the eight years Eisenhower was president and it set us up for the intelligence apparatus we have today, and I believe it could be said that Eisenhower changed America for the good. This was a very detailed, if anything too detailed biography that is both fascinating and important book for scholars of American Civics. 4 1/2 stars and I only took of a half for excessive wordiness.

[Sonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

― "Historians who study Eisenhower know how those men felt in his presence. Ike draws you in. He radiated authenticity, idealism, sincerity, and charisma, and these personal qualities were the keys to his political success. Between 1945 and 1961 no person dominated American public life more than Eisenhower. He was the most well-liked and admired man in America in these years. And he was also the most consequential. This book argues that the era from the end of the Second World War up to the presidency of John F. Kennedy deserves to be known as the Age of Eisenhower."
― William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

My interest in history started many years ago. In time, my love for history led to an interest in biographies, including presidential biographies. Only recently, however, did my interest grow to include men who were president during my lifetime. Truman was president when I was born; I was two years old when Dwight David Eisenhower was elected president of the United States in 1952. Frankly, I would have preferred to read Jean Edward Smith’s Eisenhower in War and Peace, but our local library did not have a copy available. Smith’s work is widely considered the best modern biography of Eisenhower, but Hitchcock does provide a useful survey of his presidency. Yet I’m hesitant to call Hitchcock’s offering a true biography. The book’s focus is clearly on Eisenhower’s presidency and his life after World War II; there’s little about his childhood or even his military service. Three-quarters of the book deals with the Eisenhower presidency, so it might best be described as a review of his presidency within the context of his times.

Hitchcock presents Eisenhower as a far more skillful politician than was recognized during and shortly after his presidency. While Eisenhower proved immensely popular with the people, with an average approval rating of 65 percent during his eight years as president, the historical assessment of Eisenhower as president was not great during and shortly after his presidency. But it has improved over time. A poll of 75 historians conducted in 1962 and reported by Arthur Schlesinger rated Eisenhower the 21st best president—in other words, middle-of-the-road. However, a Siena poll of historians and political scientists conducted in 2022 rated Eisenhower the sixth best president in our nation’s history. The image of Ike as a lightweight amateur more interested in golf than governing has largely faded, but I personally don’t think Ike merits the high ratings he currently receives.

Hitchcock, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, has provided the reader with a fairly well-balanced account of Eisenhower’s presidency: his successes and his failures. Rather than a chronological presentation, the author has provided a thematic rendering of the 32nd presidency. Issues addressed include McCarthyism; the Korean War; the civil rights movement; the Suez Crisis (October 29, 1956, when Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal); the spread of communism in southeast Asia; Ike’s relationship with his vice president Richard Nixon; the rise of Fidel Castro and communism in Cuba; America’s missile technology; the creation of the CIA and covert operations around the world; cold war tensions with the Soviet Union and Khrushchev; and the U2 spy missions. The 50s were a far more dangerous time than I sensed as a small child growing up in America.

While Hitchcock’s writing style is clear and understandable, the book occasionally feels somewhat lackluster—particularly when the focus is off Eisenhower.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it is rather strange reviewing not one but two presidential biographies on Election Night USA, but we live in strange times.

Most of my exposure to Eisenhower has been through the lens of World War II, where he was the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe. So I was pretty excited that this book covered everything after that point, a time period I was much less familiar with. (If you want to good examination of his life through the the end of the war you should check out Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life).

Hitchcock does an impeccable job chronicling Ike's path from retired General to Presidential candidate to President. He shows Eisenhower's virtues and missteps through the early stages of the Cold War and I felt I got a good sense of Eisenhower the man as well as the context he was operating in. I won't bore you with an exhaustive run down of Ike's life (since that is sort of the point of reading the book) but I do want to highlight some things that stood out to me both about Ike and American society at the time. You should also delve into the passages I highlighted form this book, they are copious but very insightful. Hitchcock's clear and concise writing as well as his deft use of period sources make this book engrossing and accessible.

-Both Republican and Democrats were full balls to the wall as to which party was more anti-communist, always accusing the other of surrendering or underestimating the Soviet threat. Most of the accusations were baseless but it showed just how charged the political atmosphere was in the late 40's and early 50's

-Ike wasn't that great with Civil Rights advancement.

Asked about civil rights legislation, he gave what would become a sort of mantra for him: “I do not believe we can cure all of the evils in men’s hearts by law.” This was both his personal belief and a pitch to southern white voters that he would be no crusader in this field.

This theme, of not being able to change the hearts of men through laws, still finds purchase today but was, and is, merely an excuse not to try and make things better through government action. Ike did do some good, especially early in his first term, but there was only so much he could do.

-The Republicans saw massive, MASSIVE legislative losses in congress even as Ike was very popular. The problem was, apart form Ike, there really weren't many nationally well known or liked Republicans. Heck, when Nixon is the charismatic face of the Party, you know the Party has problems.

-Ike was fine letting McCarthy do McCarthy things, even failing to strongly rise to the defense of General Marshall, someone he looked up to and respected from the War. Ike didn't always make the strong moral stand in spite of his overwhelming popularity among Amercians.

-Political parties were much more fluid in the 1950's. You had liberal Democrats and conservative democrats, liberal Republicans and conservative Republicans. That resulted in a lot more politicking among the congresscritters, where an ally in your party on one subject could turn around and be a vengeful enemy on another. Much different than today with the highly sorted parties.

-Did I mention the Cold War had some weird domestic "Scandals"?:

Hoping to diminish the impact of the Peress issue, Eisenhower drafted a statement that he read to the press corps on March 3, in which he acknowledged that the army had made an error in failing to expel the communist-leaning dentist.

It is like a little bit of 2020 tucked into the 1950's.

-For as much as Ike avoided another Korea" the man loved him some covert operations to destabilize and overthrow foreign regimes. Just ask Iran, Guatamala, and Cube (whose invasion plan got passed on to JFK when the administration changed).

-Ike suffered multiple MAJOR health crises that knocked him out of commission for months at a time.

-Did I mention he was probably just as racist as any other person hos his demographic? Becasue he was:

His go-slow instincts were driven also by certain cultural assumptions that he shared with his southern white friends. For example, the president was not above invoking the specter of race-mixing between black men and white women—an apparition many white people then considered truly horrific—to explain why the South must be allowed time to evolve in its opinions. In a vulgar exchange with Warren at a stag dinner, the president is alleged to have said that white southerners were “not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.” This sort of language was regrettably common among men of Eisenhower’s inner circle.

That might be a bit harsh since Ike did work to uphold the Supreme Court decisions, but not out of any sort of moral justice, he did so because that was the law and he followed the law.

-Despite railing against Government spending and the New Deal to get elected Ike actually did a lot to strengthen and expand it:

As a candidate Eisenhower had denounced what he called the creeping socialism of the New Deal and declared that if Americans wanted “security” they could go to jail and have their meals and housing provided for free. But once in office he adopted a far more generous, and indeed progressive outlook on the provision of social security benefits for working Americans. Eager to sever any link to the heartless policies of the previous Republican administration, Eisenhower unambiguously embraced the principle of social security in his 1953 State of the Union address. “The individual citizen must have safeguards against personal disaster inflicted by forces beyond his control,” he insisted. Three weeks later he used a homely metaphor to reassure Americans: “It is a proper function of government to help build a sturdy floor over the pit of personal disaster, and to this objective we are all committed.” Eisenhower would be no Herbert Hoover.

-Nixon was sorted of foisted on Ike by the Old Guard of the Republican party. Ike didn't really like Nixon too much:

In fact Ike briefly discussed with Adams the idea of having two vice presidents, one to handle domestic policy and the other foreign matters, men of substance who could handle the heavy burdens of government and bring to the president only the most crucial decisions. Ike did not have Nixon in mind for either role.

I would say my view of Ike definitely changed and became more nuanced after reading this book. I would classify him has a pretty OK president. On the positive side of the ledger he did a pretty good job calming the Cold War, avoided some foreign entanglements, strengthened social safety programs, expanded the science and technical investments in the country, and managed the national budget pretty well. On the negative side you have his lukewarm support of Civil Rights, his use of the CIA to overthrow foreign governments (which were subsequently replaced with repressive regimes), and his funneling of money to "anti-communist" regimes that were also very oppressive (looking at you Diem led South Vietnam). I think this book would be great for anyone looking to get a better sense of the early Cold War and 1950's America. Hitchcock sums up the Age of Eisenhower succinctly:

Those seemingly charmed years would be forever invoked as a time of peace, prosperity, security, and confidence. The ugly realities of the 1950s—the war in Korea, the shame of McCarthyism, the persistence of Jim Crow, the deadly CIA plots, the nuclear fears—drifted out of focus. Instead popular memory dwelled happily on kitschy ephemera like Father Knows Best, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and men in fedoras.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic history of President Eisenhower. Instead of paining him as the national grandpa during his presidency, Mr. Hitchcock portrays Eisenhower as a red-blooded partisan who tried to paint himself as a unifying figure. It worked, especially when Americans wanted normalcy after 20+ years of war and economic hardship. That was the reason that Eisenhower was very successful in his presidency. Mr. Hitchcock does criticize Eisenhower a lot, and most of his shortcomings do come from not being a born politician. However, he does seem to give Eisenhower a pass on a lot of the things that happened during his time, whether he was directly involved via civil rights, or indirectly as in a lot of the fiascos that happened after he left the Oval Office, like the Bay of Pigs. Hitchcock does a good job in assigning blame to Eisenhower, when need be, but I felt that was him trying to not come off as too big of an Eisenhower fan boy. He doesn't show too much bias, except for his disdain for LBJ.

The one thing I will note is when I read The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton by William Leuchtenburg, is his section on Eisenhower is that he said that Presidents are judged by what they did, and Eisenhower, for better or for worse, didn't do a lot. Interpret that however you want to.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 4 out of 5]

An able, though unspectacular, biogeography, William Hitchcock touches lightly over most every significant event in President, not General, Eisenhower’s life. Oh, there’s a chapter devoted to his Kansas origins, his meteoric WWII ascent—which mostly serves to illustrate how Ike believed battle honors “cannot hide in his memories the crosses marking the resting places of the dead.” “It is impossible,” writes Hitchcock, “to imagine Patton or MacArthur sounding so mournful in this moment of high honor or deflecting the proffered acclaim onto the hallowed memory of fallen soldiers.”

That Ike came from humble roots did not spoil the fact that he was a near-charter member of Augusta golf club. Ike believed free-market capitalism brought the cream—himself included—to the surface:

“Although they behaved like elitists, retreating behind a high wall of wealth and privilege, they held themselves up as proof that pedigree was no requirement for success in America.”

This did not make Ike a believer in “supply-side” economics. The last President to have three balanced budgets, he would have been horrified at Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts.

Hitchcock gives Ike a bit of a pass on his McCarty-era betrayal of General George Marshall. Perhaps, but I don’t buy it.


The author oversells Ike’s Civil Rights record. True, he did send Federal troops to desegregate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. And he did meet once with Black leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, albeit reluctantly. Otherwise, Ike forever regretted nominating the (hidden liberal) Earl Warren as Chief Justice—and Warren was the prime mover behind Brown v. Board of Education. One suspects Hitchcock concentrated overmuch on Fredrick Morrow, the only Black member of Ike’s White House staff. Plus, the book contains at least a half dozen newspaper quotes praising Ike’s forward-looking racial policies—without revealing that each quoted paper catered exclusively to Black audiences.

As a long-time soldier, it was inevitable that Ike would be most involved with, and most remembered for, foreign policy. Most crucially, he never swayed from an unabashed Cold Warrior. Prosperity at home was part of his message to the newly independent Third World—democracy was an alternative to Communism. As Hitchcock portrays it, Ike’s humiliation of the British, French and Israelis in the Suez Crisis was no mere pique at being lied to: Ike, and CIA Chief Allen Dulles, each thought the carrot a more effective tool against Nasser and other potentially pro-Soviet states (such as Venezuela) than the stick (all too likely to force the undecideds into the Russian camp).

Yet Ike’s greatest contribution to the Cold War also was his most clandestine. During his Presidency, the CIA, with Ike’s full (plausibly deniable) knowledge, became specialists is U.S. funded, nominally locally originated, coups to topple any leader the CIA thought leaned Red. It worked in Guatemala, in Iran, South Vietnam, etc. These countries turned away from Moscow—but hardly became functioning democracies, despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid.

Ike’s addiction to Black Ops led directly to the U-2 incident, when the Soviets shot down a U.S. spy plane, recovering its pilot, and the aircraft, which the pilot inexplicably failed to destroy. This led to a Keystone Cops series of press releases, where the U.S. tried to claim the plane wasn’t over the USSR, it was a weather plane, etc. But it was two weeks before a four powers summit, and when Khrushchev finally paraded plane and pilot before the press, Ike did something that forever endeared him to the spook profession: he told the truth, saying the decision to to authorize the flight was his. Veracity certainly is a valued quality in a leader, but the traditional response when caught red-handed is to blame a subordinate and fire him—CIA head Dulles, for example. Khrushchev, in fact expected this; when Ike proved less-than-diplomatic, the Soviet Premier torpedoed the summit.



“It was easy enough to blame Khrushchev for the summit’s failure, but Eisenhower too bore responsibility, which he refused to accept.…As for his role in approving the overflight at such a critical moment, he expressed no regret. ‘I know of no decision I would make differently.’… The downing of the spy plane had a huge impact on his Presidency and the cold war itself. It shattered his hopes to bring about a thaw in the war, thereby robbing him of a brilliant achievement in his last month’s in office… And it provided his domestic rivals with powerful ammunition to use against him and his handling of the Cold War. In retrospect his decision to approve U-2 overflights in the spring of 1960 was the biggest mistake he ever made.”



Reporters then, and historians until recently, discounted Eisenhower as at best a care-taking golfer President; at worst a fool in over his head. My how things have changed. In many lists of Best Presidents, Ike’s up there in the top 10, somewhere between Reagan and Polk.



I would not place this book nearly as high in lists of Presidential bios. Yet, to be fair, too many books about Ike focus on Ike-the-soldier-politician, not Ike-the-political-soldier. I only wish the writing consistently was more grabbing.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2021...

William Hitchcock’s “The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s” was published in 2018. Hitchcock is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and has written a half-dozen books including “The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe” which was a 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Nonfiction. He is currently working on a book about FDR and the rise of fascism in Europe.

It is often argued “The Age of Eisenhower” is more about the age and less about Eisenhower. But it is probably best described as a detailed review of Eisenhower’s presidency within the context of his times. And for readers new to Ike, it also provides a brief but useful survey of his pre-presidency (but with a focus on his life after World War II).

The book opens with a compelling Prologue laying out the author’s thesis: that Eisenhower was a far more adroit politician than was recognized at the time…or for decades thereafter. But Hitchcock is just the latest in a crowded field of historians to share that view; the image of Ike as a disinterested and doddering president has largely faded. Hitchcock goes further, however, arguing he was such an influential force that the years between World War II and JFK’s presidency should be known as the Age of Eisenhower.

But while the author’s fondness for Eisenhower is unmistakable, his 517-page narrative provides a systematic and fairly well balanced accounting of the 34th president’s successes and failures. On issues such as McCarthyism, race relations, foreign affairs and domestic issues, this book describes and dissects the status quo, examines the competing forces which confronted Eisenhower and analyzes and critiques his actions.

Eisenhower’s two-term presidency accounts for about three-fourths of the book’s length and the methodical fifteen-chapter review of his presidency is managed thematically rather than chronologically. But readers hoping to keep track of the actual sequence of events will be delighted to find that topics are generally covered in the order in which they transpired.

Hitchcock’s writing style is extraordinarily clear and comprehensible. But large parts of the narrative – particularly portions which take place away from Eisenhower – feel fact-heavy and colorless. Readers who are strongly inclined toward captivating prose over incisive history will quickly conclude this is not the ideal vehicle for exploring Eisenhower’s life.

Some of the more “scholarly” topics should appeal to a broad audience, however, including Eisenhower’s perspective on McCarthyism, his attitudes regarding the civil rights movement and his relationship with Richard Nixon. Even the Suez Crisis is surprisingly engrossing. Finally, Hitchcock does a nice job reviewing the fall and rise of Eisenhower’s legacy.

Overall, as a detailed review of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency and assessment of his political legacy, William Hitchcock’s “The Age of Eisenhower” is excellent. Readers especially interested in his two terms in the White House will find this a thoughtful exploration of those years. But for readers seeking a colorful and comprehensive look at Eisenhower’s life – including his service in World War II – this book is not ideal.

Overall Rating: 3¾ stars

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s" is my 3rd book on Eisenhower. The first two just didn't capture who the man was. With this work, Hitchcock nails it. This book is now THE definitive work on Ike, in my opinion.

Hitchcock is thorough but gets right to the point. Ike's childhood and time as a general are briefly dispatched. He gets to the Presidency with great speed and I fully appreciated that. Hitchcock also doesn't sugar coat Eisenhower. He frequently criticizes Ike's decisions, all the while doing a masterful job of walking the reader through how Ike arrived there.

I suppose I'm obsessed with Eisenhower because I wish this was still the Republican party instead of Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Trump. I guess I'll just have to keep dreaming.

[Scott Hitchcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*'s

A very well done piece on Ike's presidency. It's hard these days to imagine a liberal Republican but Ike would have qualified. It's also a shocking reminder that in that time period they were considering nukes as just another bomb. Eisenhower was definitely a complicated individual and his battles with Khrushchev in particular were interesting. It's funny how time has refocused how effective a president he was.

[Cynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My GR friend Allen and his partner were cleaning house and gave books to various friends, including me. Thoughtful and Appreciated.

I had long wondered why I have never felt acquainted with the presidency of Eisenhower. But being both a big and little "D" democrat, I wasn't overly concerned. Just about the time I realized that I really should get acquainted with the presidency of Eisenhower, my thoughtful friends sent me this book. Having read the book, I now know why I have never felt acquainted with this particular president. Worth reading the book to find out why we liked Ike but never really knew this enigmatic president.

Particularly in my nonfiction reading practice, I rate books based upon how much I learn, how much I feel expanded after reading the book. Becoming acquainted with a 20th-century president who presided in an era just previous to my birth and who continued to be mentioned in household conversations as I grew up would be someone important for me to know something about. So I have rated this book/source of new awareness at 4 stars.

Having no previous acquaintance with Eisenhower the president, I rely on Allen's better knowledge to guide me in my understanding of this book: Allen's review.

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly Eisenhower rather than “age of.“ Has the feel of a breezy biography in spite of its length.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always had a fascination with the 1950s, even though they ended many years before I was born. But I know little that is not trivia or surface knowledge. My excuse is that it seems difficult to find good histories of the 1950s that are not either narrowly focused or crammed with ideological claptrap blended with Baby Boomer preening (David Halberstam’s awful "The Fifties" is an example of such a combination). This book, William Hitchcock’s "The Age of Eisenhower," seemed like a reasonable way to try to expand my knowledge.

Dwight Eisenhower presided over the 1950s, since he was President from 1953 until 1961. For the most part, Hitchcock’s book is a good overview. True, despite the title and the author’s claims, it’s really mostly a biography of Eisenhower’s presidency, not a tale of the age. But that’s fine; the reader should not be heard to complain if he get a lot about Eisenhower in a book where the man himself stares into your eyes from the cover. Nor should the reader complain if the author focuses mostly on two topics, the Cold War and civil rights for African Americans. After all, as far as areas where the federal government was involved, those were the most important topics of the time, at least in retrospect, and while certainly those were not the whole of people’s lives, or for many people of the time even very important, it’s a reasonable choice to focus on those two areas to illuminate Eisenhower and his presidency, though it doesn’t tell us much about society as a whole.

Hitchcock is a great admirer of Eisenhower, and it very evidently pains him how nasty and contemptuous the intellectuals of the 1950s and following decades were to him. They criticized Eisenhower as unintelligent, lacking taste, provincial and given to lowbrow pleasures like golf and poker, lazy (he took a lot of vacations), and inadequately ideological. Those intellectuals, legion and led by mediocre and nearly forgotten men like Norman Mailer and Arthur Schlesinger, hated Eisenhower in and of himself, and more so in comparison with John Kennedy, whose boots they licked even during the Eisenhower presidency, a groveling that turned to pure hagiography when Kennedy did himself a favor by getting shot and thereby achieving apotheosis in spite of his middling abilities. One way to make someone look good is to run down his predecessors, so for decades, until Baby Boomer intellectuals were finally shoved into nursing homes, Eisenhower was treated like historical dirt.

Hitchcock’s basic point is that Eisenhower was the right man for the right time—not perfect, to be sure, but pragmatic and flexible in an age when that was what was needed. In contrast to the stereotype peddled by the intellectuals, the author goes to great lengths to show that Eisenhower was disciplined and attentive to all the key matters of his presidency. That doesn’t mean he always made the right choices, from the perspective of the time and even more in hindsight. But Hitchcock makes a compelling case that he did an excellent job, and that he was neither detached nor lazy.

The author deftly, and as far as I can tell accurately, covers in detail all the relevant hot spots of the Cold War during Eisenhower’s terms in office: the big ones, such as Korea, the Soviet Union, the U-2 program, and the “missile gap,” and the small ones, such as Guatemala, Suez, Hungary, Iraq, and Cuba (where Eisenhower endorsed and moved the Bay of Pigs invasion forward, but Kennedy inherited and bungled it by being too cowardly to provide the air and sea support Eisenhower had envisioned). In Hitchcock’s telling, Eisenhower was far from a pushover, but he was loathe to endorse the aggressive recommendations that were the norm among both the professional military and his civilian advisors, such as Allen and John Foster Dulles. Still, Eisenhower and most of his generals casually assumed that in any conflict, such as with the Red Chinese over Quemoy and Matsu, that they would use tactical nuclear weapons. The United States tested twenty-eight bombs in July, 1957 and thirty-six in October, all on the surface of the Nevada desert. These things seem bizarre today.

Hitchcock also covers in detail the civil rights movement, something that Eisenhower generally but not viscerally supported. He was an incrementalist, believing that people would eventually come around to the right way of thinking and that aggressive federal government action would likely backfire. In the event, his hand was forced by both atrocities such as the Emmett Till murder and by the constant pressure of men such as Roy Wilkins and Martin Luther King, Jr., such that he was willing to send federal troops to enforce court integration orders in Little Rock and supported modest civil rights legislation in Congress (which was gutted by Lyndon Johnson). Today, we are constantly told how emancipation is necessary for every group except one, and such “struggles” are compared to the struggle for African American civil rights. But we are never told why, for example, Latinos suffered injustice in any way comparable to African Americans. As this book makes very clear, they didn’t, nor did any other group. The African American experience was unique, and uniquely bad, in America, and the reader necessarily draws the obvious conclusion that black people are the only group deserving of emancipation, and perhaps even compensation. Nobody else.

Aside from the terminal decline of the Baby Boomers, Eisenhower’s reputation has gained shine for two other reasons. One is that it is the fate of every Republican president, no matter how moderate, to be pilloried by the Left while in office, but praised after his death as a model of virtue compared to today’s Republicans, in order to attack today’s Republicans. For the same reason that Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush are no longer attacked as slavering Hitlers, as they were during their presidencies, and John McCain and Mitt Romney are now praised as moderates, when they were portrayed as fascist racists when they actually posed a possible threat to the Left, so Eisenhower is also praised today, in order to score points in current political debates. That’s standard politics, of course, especially when the Left controls the news-setting media. But the second reason is more pernicious: the Left, who utterly dominates today’s historians, likes Eisenhower because he laid the groundwork for their massive erosion of American virtue, and of America itself, in in the 1960s and 1970s.

How? Eisenhower initiated the venerable Republican tradition of claiming that he was opposed to leftist victories, in particular the New Deal, and running on that position, but in office doing exactly the opposite and instead expanding the power of the Left. He thought that was the road to Republican success; “The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk.” Eisenhower was the prototype of sixty years of loser Republicans, unconvinced of their own principles and unwilling to fight for them. And Eisenhower and Congressional Republicans delivered for their enemies, with such gifts as a massive expansion of Social Security and expansion of government on all axes. Given that the Republicans suffered major losses in Congress in each of 1954, 1956, and 1958, during a time of prosperity and confidence, this strategy pretty evidently wasn’t working as an electoral strategy, but that doesn’t seem to have affected Eisenhower’s devotion to it. Worse, Eisenhower appointed extremists like William Brennan and Earl Warren to the Supreme Court, allowing the Left to completely rewrite the Constitution. The only area in which Eisenhower consistently opposed the Left was foreign policy. But they quickly managed to undo all his work there, and in any case the foreign policy concerns of the 1950s are gone today. Thus, overall Eisenhower governed in a way that put no roadblocks in the path of the Left, and in fact smoothed their rise to power. It is no wonder today’s leftist historians find much to like in Ike.

The author’s justifiable focus on the Cold War and on civil rights makes the 1950s seem like an era of anxiety and injustice, but on those rare occasions when Hitchcock’s focus turns elsewhere, what is clear is that it was a golden age. Everybody did well, not just the Lords of Tech and the crony capitalists. “The prosperity of the 1950s ran both deep and broad.” Children were everywhere (even if they grew up to be Baby Boomers, the worst generation ever). The hand of government was unbelievably light compared to today (though not nearly as light as before the odious Progressives got their hands around America’s throat in the early years of the twentieth century). Optimism ruled the day. We are often told of the 1950s that despite the attractive glow that surrounds any accurate description of it, that we are wrong to think it was a high point for America. Why we are wrong is rarely specified, and if it is, the complaints take the form of pointing to injustice (real in the case of African Americans, supposed, or largely supposed, in all other cases) and claiming without argument that the whole decade must therefore have been dreadful. It is a form of magic incantation, told to ward off the reality that the Left has destroyed what America once was, and perhaps still could have been.

What the reader takes most of all from this book is that the 1950s were the last time one could legitimately claim there was such a thing as an American, or an America. Those days are gone now, replaced by a country with the same name, but little commonality among the people inhabiting it. A man like Eisenhower could not be President today, because there is no way to bind together oil and water by will. That makes Eisenhower not a lesson, but a historical curiosity. The future is found not in nostalgia, but in something new, not incremental, that will slice off the barnacles of our polity and re-bind it in a fresh form. About what that form will be, unfortunately, the America of 1950s has little to say.

[Joe L · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read about an incredible man and terrific president. The author comes across as a fan and who wouldn’t be?
Perhaps one of the top 3 best presidencies of the twentieth century.

I like Ike!! 🇺🇸

[Porter Broyles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up in as a military brat, so my perspective of Ike was very positive. He was one of the great military geniuses of American History, a president who stood up to Russia, and a staunch supporter of the military.

Thirty years later my point of view has shifted some. The things that I admired as a youth are the things that I found myself more critical of now.

This book had me questioning my high regard for Ike. He was very much into the CIA and using it to overthrow governments that didn't stand for democracy. He wasn't above using threat of war or even nukes stop him. I couldn't help but think that Ike was a major force is building up the Cold War between the US and Russia.

At the same time, Ike was very big into education. When he realized that the US had fallen behind Russia and China in the sciences and engineering, he pushed for improvements in both because he realized the importance of the sciences/engineering for the future of the country. He tied education to national defense, which I fear a lot of politicians forget today. He also pushed for a national highway system---again because it would improve the national defense, but he realized the importance of improving commerce and trade within the country.

He was also a surprisingly important voice in Civil Rights. His role often gets overlooked in light of Kennedy's legacy. But in many Ike's administration did more for Civil Rights than Kennedy's!

Now I have to qualify it, because Ike was a little skittish about black Americans. If you've read Taylor Branch's "Parting the Water", you know that at one point that MLK said that Eisenhower surpassed Kennedy in all regards except his ability to interact with blacks. Kennedy easily interacted with African Americans, but did little early on, Ike was uncomfortable but his administration did a fair amount.

Why do I keep saying his administration? Because he left a lot of the Civil Rights issues up to his Attorney General Herbert Brownell. Brownell believe it was important to support Brown in Brown v Tulsa and to fight for Civil Rights.

But Ike was important. Kennedy appointed Southern Justices who tended to be segretationalist early on, Ike's weren't. He appointed Chief Justice Warren, who was key in many Civil Rights decisions.

He signed the Civil Rights act of 1957. He affirmed the Brown decision to the point of sending troops to help with desegregation when need be. He integrated the military (yeah, Truman signed the order, but Ike made it a reality.) Ike also used an executive order to force communities surrounding military bases to be desegregated. If a restaurant/housing unit refused to serve black soldiers, then the white soldiers were not allowed to patron the place!

Having finished the book, I ended up with mixed feelings about Ike. The area that I had always admired had been diminished, but the parts I knew little about had been increased in admiration.

Overall, this was a very good book that talks about Ike during the 1950s. It is not an Ike biography. The parts of his life before and after the 50s are short. It focuses on the period where he became active in the Truman administration through his presidency.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitchcock’s biography of Eisenhower is a good blend of Eisenhower’s political and personal life, his military and his public careers though the personal takes a back seat. As is required for such a story Hitchcock’s style is fact driven which comes across as less intimate though Eisenhower’s warmth and relatability for many people insured his success. It’s easy to write him off as a popular war hero who traded on that talent to go even higher but behind his kind uncle facade he was an intelligent, driven man with strong principles.

The Nixon sideshow is funny (at this distance) as is the inside view of Eisenhower the general transformed himself into Eisenhower he world leader. It’s almost like he was a stealth intellectual. From his religious roots from a family of four boys in Abilene, KS Where he was taught the value of hard work and tenaciousness, lessons that would serve him throughout his life, to his average student record at West Point. He seemed to make the most of whatever he encountered and turned it into success but he never lost his humanity. It’s almost aberrant in this ego driven world to learn about a man who respected his positions rather than using them as a platform for face time.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ecopy.

[Andrew Morin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I'm not fully sure why I committed, but I finally finished it. I think this was fine. Biographies (even [especially?] presidential) generally don't interest me, so I wish there had been more "age" and less "Eisenhower" here (or more of both America and the World). But overall, a fairly balanced picture, if a little rosy at times.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this balanced, well-researched new biography of the Eisenhower presidency. Coverage of diplomacy and politics is top-notch. Coverage of civil rights is rich, and, like Eisenhower's own view, could be richer. But the use of archival resources is deep, especially pertaining to intelligence uncovered in recent decades.
Eisenhower reminds me in many ways of my mother's father, newspaper reporter and editor Wright Bryan, who Eisenhower awarded the Medal of Freedom. This author, historian William Hitchcock takes the extensive literature on what we assume to be quiet, "Happy Days" and provides the context for Eisenhower's successes (armistice in Korea, middle-of-the road policies) and failures (CIA assassinations, spy planes, and hi-jinks, Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy).
Highly recommended.

[Joseph Leake]

I found this to be captivating — illuminating and eye-opening, and consistently well-told. It's also fair-minded, which makes it both more enjoyable for reading and more useful for learning. (Enjoyment is spoiled when the author wants to hit you over the head with how right Their People are, and how wrong The Other People are; and such an author, of course, can't be entirely trustworthy.) I only just now realized that this author also wrote The Struggle for Europe, on post-WWII European history, which I also found highly insightful, engaging, and balanced.

[Cheyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written narrative of Eisenwhower’s presidential years with many of the different issues he confronted, including the numerous covert operations undertaken by his administration. Not a traditional biography as it covers very little of pre or post presidency or family life.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read, very good insight into Ike’s presidency and politics.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Eisenhower had that rarest of gifts in politics: he brought America together.”

Damns Eisenhower with faint praise. Following the rising tide of academic and popular reappraisal of Ike, Hancock tries to hew to the old bumbling amateur angle, even as he says he rejects it.

“These first years of his presidency, Eisenhower laid down a blueprint for the warfare state--an official plan to mobilize the nation and put it on a permanent war footing. The military-industrial complex had begun to take shape.”

“Eisenhower, [Garry] Wills believed, ‘had the true professional’s instinct for making things look easy. He appeared to be performing less work than he actually did. And he wanted it that way. An air of ease inspires confidence.”

Shoddy scholarship. Adds his snarky quips at the end of paragraphs, then sets the footnote, implying that the cited source (often in the 1950s) is to blame. “That suited Eisenhower fine.” “Middle-class paradise on a presidential scale.” “The comparatively glamorous and graceful Jacqueline Kennedy.

“The central paradox of the Eisenhower presidency: that a man so successful at the ballot box and so overwhelmingly popular among voters could have been given such poor marks by the political class. His critics never grasped the profound appeal of the man and never appreciated the depths of his political talent.”

Other, better modern investigations into this most-underrated president of the twentieth century--for example, try any David A. Nichols work.

“Dwight Eisenhower must be counted among the most consequential presidents in modern American history.”

[Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on Eisenhower’s presidency that strives to make a case for the centrality of Eisenhower’s role as domestic and international peacemaker. I really enjoyed this book, but think there were a few things that might have been better. 1) Whatever sense of unity that existed between Russia and China was on the way out with the death of Stalin in 1953. There are numerous books, memoirs, and academic studies to document this fact. However, the author persisted in using a term like “the communist world” repeatedly. I winced every time I read it. 2) I think he might have provided the reader a better sense of what was going on in various other foreign countries when discussing what foreign policy changes were afoot during Eisenhower’s presidency. He is thorough in some instances (Suez, for example), but not in others. Russia, China, Iran have things just mysteriously happen. 3) I think Truman and Johnson are not fairly portrayed in this book. Truman created the framework that allowed the architecture that Eisenhower used to fight the Cold War. Johnson as majority leader (for another party) was a generally reliable ally in passing measures that the administration wanted. Neither was really as bad as depicted. We certainly have a better sense of what went on than occurs in this book. While I have tended to dwell on some of the negative aspects of this book (and these are minor), they should by no means dissuade anyone from reading it. This is an excellent, indeed outstanding, work of history on one of the most consequential presidents in American history. It shows what would be a radically different path that the Republican Party could have opted to follow, human rights vice state’s rights. We would certainly have been living in a better country and a better world had Eisenhower’s vision of moderation, integrity, and responsible government prevailed.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book superb as not just a biography of one man but a look into an important decade in human history. I've never known much about Eisenhower's terms in office as the 50's are considered the last decade of the "old" America before the cultural explosion in the 60's so the lack of appeal was more of what didn't happen as opposed to what did happen. Fact is it's amazing the amount of issues that faced the US and world as a whole in the 1950's once the Cold War set in. While the upheavals of the 60's dwarf the 50's in magnitude, there is no less a copious amount of material here with Ike as the central character. The author touches on almost all the major issues during his presidency while fairly laying out a case for him to be both lauded and scolded for his key decisions. It also just shows you that the President is still a human and makes the same mistakes any of us would especially when put in an impossible position. Recommended.

[Jason Hojnacki · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the title I was hoping for something closer to Nixonland where the lives of average people were tied into the story, but this was not the case. This is more like a biography of Eisenhower’s life with the really interesting parts taken out. It’s definitely thorough with the big points about what was occurring during his presidency, but I would’ve liked to know more about the man himself or more about how average Americans perceived him and the era.

[WendyB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting history, well-written.

[Charles Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually readable presidential biography - loved it.