After 70 years, Eisenhower remains a respected president with a mostly positive influence. Not only did he lead the Allies to victory in World War II, but as president, he also organized the world for a lasting peace. He continued to develop the American economy so that over time, America would win the Cold War against communism while not annihilating the world in the process.

Newton analyzes these issues in careful detail, but he tends to be overly sympathetic with his subject. He does criticize Eisenhower on civil rights (Ike’s obvious weakness) and is consistently critical of Nixon. However, on almost every other issue, Newton sides with Eisenhower without much criticism. Sometimes, this is helpful – as when Newton uses Eisenhower to critique the directions of the 1960s conservative movement as well as the modern Republican party. Overall, it still appears that Newton identifies with Eisenhower too much.

Eisenhower’s greatest legacy in American history remains his deep mastery of international politics. Newton makes this clear and shows how much care Eisenhower brought to the task. The sophisticated nuance of Ike’s “middle way” stands to teach much to modern Republicanism, and Newton is not shy in bringing this out. Further, Eisenhower’s sense of balance would likewise benefit the modern Democratic movement as well – which is why Ike was also recruited by Democrats to run under their banner in 1952.

At their best, presidential biographies contain much to teach readers about national politics. The illuminate social trends that impacted the country over long swaths of time as brought out by the leader. They also teach the limits of any one person to impose their will on American politics. As Newton hints at, JFK was a reaction to Eisenhower’s lack of focus on domestic issues. America consistently remains larger than the presidential office.

This book has appeal to those who want to learn from American history first. As with study of Teddy Roosevelt, modern Republicans can pick up a deeper tapestry of their party from the history of their standard bearers. Reading this book can help readers to avoid an all-consuming grasp on the politics of the present. Further, it can teach all politically interested Americans about the care and nurture required to calm the international order.

Reading this book certainly made me long for a leader with as much practical wisdom about the world as Ike. Like all leaders, each American president has individual shortcomings, but reading books like Newton’s bring out the beauty of their strengths. Eisenhower’s eight years certainly secured with care the direction of the post-World-War-II order for a more peaceful world. ( )

4 stars: Very good

From the back cover: America's 34th president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter in chief. This new book reveals how wrong they were Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb and refused to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, "McCarthywasism". He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession., built an interstate highway system, and turned an 8Billion deficit in 1953 into a $500 million surplus in 1960. Ike was the last president until Bill Clinton to leave his country in the black.

The President Eisenhower of popular imagination is a benign figure, armed with a putter, a winning smile, and little else. The Eisenhower of Jim Newton's rendering is shrewd, sentimental, and tempestuous. He mourned the death of his first son and doted on his grandchildren but could, one aide recalled, "peel the varnish off a desk" with his temper. Mocked as shallow and inarticulate, he was in fact a meticulous manager. Admired as a general, he was a champion of peace. In Korea and Vietnam, in Quemoy and Berlin, his generals urged him to wage nuclear war. Time and again he considered the idea and rejected it. And it was Eisenhower who appointed the liberal justices Earl Warren and William Brennan and who then called in the military to enforce desegregation in schools.

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I first read Jim Newton's biography on Earl Warren, after hearing his speak at the Festival of Books. At fest, he mentioned that authoring the Warren book piqued his interest in Eisenhower, so he then tackled that subject next. I'm glad he did. I had little knowledge of the man, the president, or even more than his name as general.

I loved how the book was structured. A pet peeve of mine in biographies, is taking 300 pages to even get to the event/ time period that I as the reader am interested in. Not this book. Newton immediately names 8 people who were main influences: "...the lessons from his mother, the patience of his wife, the gallantry of George Patton, the patient tutoring of Fox Conner, the negative example of Douglas MacArthur, the serene leadership of George Marshall, and the wise political tutelage of Herbert Brownell." Newton then spends approximately 50 pages covering Eisenhower's life and relationships with the above 8 people, until we land at his decision to run for office. This was a tight, informative section which provided me the insight into the character to read the rest of the biography---without bogging me down with every meeting, anecdote and dinner conversation of the first 50 years of his life.

Some quotes I wanted to remember:

[Running against Adlai Stevenson] "Ike's friend George Allen felt Stevenson's inexperience in the area of foreign affairs and his intellectual distance from America's working people. He was stirring, yes, but also aloof and cerebral. For Stevenson, the campaign was an opportunity to educate; for Eisenhower, it was a battle to win. So while Stevenson formed arguments and theses, Ike turned to short advertisements and jingles. It struck some as trite, but by election day no adult American had not heard "I like Ike". The 1952 campaign not only created a winner; it changed the character of American politics."

In the height of McCarthyism, Eisenhower gave a speech at Dartmouth. This was his first public censure. of McCarthy. "Near the end of his speech, however, Eisenhower departed from his text. 'Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book as long as any book does not offend your sense of decency. That should be the only censorship'."

From the famous "military industrial complex" speech: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

Proposal to the UN: "The nuclear nations, he suggested should each make contributions of uranium and fissionable material to a UN agency, which would then apply that material to problems of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. The argument for such a sharing of material was two fold: it would apply the fruits of development to peaceful purposes, and it would shrink the global supply of fissionable material available for destruction. It was a genuinely new idea in the still-nascent politics of the Cold War, through which Eisenhower was improvising a fragile peace. Morever, it reflected Ike's delicate triangulation of the conflict's forces: American defense, Soviet containment, and the thread of nuclear war."

"Faced with the awesome implications of the Soviet Union's ability to wage nuclear war, Eisenhower changed. The nuclear enthusiast of 1953 had become a more sober leader by 1956. .. Ike was haunted by images of wrecked society across Europe and America, of the Northern hemisphere so damaged it would "virtually cease to exist". He began to question the meaning of military victory in the modern world. Even as his top advisers planned for small nuclear wars in which America would use tactical weapons to contain Communist expansion, Eisenhower veered in the opposite direction. Military leaders were often appalled by his new approach, but he had nothing to prove to them. "

[when Khrushchev visited the US]. "Eisenhower urged Khrushchev to enjoy the American people and appreciate their commitment to peace, their disinterest in world domination. 'I assure you they have no ill will toward any other people, that they covet no territory, no additional power. Nor do they seek to interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation. I most sincerely hope that as you come to see and believe these truths about our people there will develop an improved basis on which we can together consider the problems that divide us'."

[Upon his imminent departure from office]. "During my entire life, until I came back from WWII as something of a VIP, I was known by my contemporaries as 'Ike'. Whether or not the deep friendships I enjoy have had their beginnings in the ante or post-war period, I now demand, as my right, that you, starting January 21, 1961, address me by that nickname. No longer do I propose to be excluded from the privileges that other friends enjoy."

In the acknowledgements section, Newton discusses the myriad news reports, published transcripts, and much more, of the era. He goes on to discuss the Oppenheimer letters and McCarthy transcripts. He says "Devotion to chronicling society in all its serious complexity was an article of faith for American society in all its serious complexity was an article of faith... the stewards of American journalism at its apex understood that it was expensive and difficult, that it was a job for serious, seasoned people, not amateurs, poseurs, or profiteers. They spent lavishly and constructed a vital business as well as a sustaining culture. It is a lesson that no engaged citizen should forget but that sadly, many have." ( )

Very positive biography of a stolid Republican who had a temper and loved golf, and delegated a lot of important decisions to his subordinates. Weirdly, the book spends essentially no time on Ike as general: if I were to say “he oversaw D-Day,” I’d only be spending about a paragraph less than the book on the actual details of what he did/decided. I know it's called "The White House Years," but actually the book takes half its time getting there, and it could've used more on Eisenhower's war experiences and whether they affected him at all as president. Newton takes the position that Eisenhower was basically indifferent to racial discrimination (despite his famous comment to Earl Warren about how white girls shouldn’t have to sit next to black boys, which Newton concludes probably did occur) and thought that “both sides” were too aggressive, but sent federal troops to Little Rock to preserve the power of the federal government when directly challenged. Ike also oversaw what was, at the time, a “successful” covert operation against the government of Iran, and unfortunately we took the wrong lessons from that, trying to replicate it across the developing world where we wanted to win proxy battles with the Soviets by hook or by crook. ( )

I previously reviewed another product of current scholarship on Eisenhower, Ike’s Bluff by Evan Thomas. This second review is best read in conjunction with the first. I listened to this book rather than read it; accordingly, I have not included quotes from the author.

Newton’s book is more comprehensive than Thomas’s; it does not have the narrow focus on Ike’s nuclear strategy that the Thomas book has. Thus we learn more about Ike’s early life, his relationships with his wife and his brothers, his somewhat ambiguous position on civil rights, his appointments to the Supreme Court and subsequent dealings with the Court, and his illnesses during the presidency, all of which Newton covers admirably.

In particular, Newton recounts Eisenhower’s stand on civil rights thoroughly and sympathetically. When, in 1957, Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas defied the Court’s order to desegregate Little Rock’s schools by using the National Guard to keep blacks out of high school in Little Rock, Ike was incensed. While he privately disagreed with the Court's desegregation decision, he believed it was his responsibility to enforce the law and decisions of the Supreme Court. Not trusting the Arkansas Guard, he first nationalized them and then ordered them to return to their armories. Next, he sent in the redoubtable 101st Airborne Division to carry out the Federal court order and protect the black students.

[Faubus responded by shutting down Little Rock high schools for the 1958-1959 school year. Incredibly, this elevated him to the Gallup Poll’s 1958 list of “Ten Men in the World Most Admired by Americans.”]

Newton’s analysis of Eisenhower’s famous valedictory speech in January, 1961, in which he coined the term “military-industrial complex,” is fair-minded and enlightening. Ike decried the expansion of the complex, but he realized that growth was necessary to cope with the exigencies of the Cold War. Eisenhower deplored not so much the existence of the complex as its necessity. [You can read the full-text of this speech online, here.]

Newton maintains that Ike was powerful and effective in such a quiet, low-key way that recognition of his brilliance eluded many. But his leadership qualities are such that those who are now involved in politics would do well to take a closer look.

Discussion: I did not detect serious differences of opinion between the two writers, although Newton gives more credence to the conveyance through India of a threat to use nuclear weapons to end the Korean War than Thomas does.

Newton emphasizes Eisenhower’s natural inclination and consistent policy to seek a middle ground in domestic controversies. He also applauds Eisenhower's legacy of peace and prosperity in spite of continuous and serious challenges. Like other authors, he argues that Eisenhower's penchant for golf and cards did not diminish his ability to attend to his presidential duties.

Newton does not totally neglect Ike’s flaws, such as his somewhat mixed record on civil rights. Also, he attributes Ike’s long silence regarding the outrages of McCarthyism as a deliberate strategy, believing that McCarthy would fall from his own excesses. In this Ike was correct, but the process took a longer time than many critics would have preferred.

Moreover, while Ike avoided large-scale conflicts, he delighted in covert action such as the CIA sponsored coups in Iran and Guatemala. Although sometimes successful in the short term, some of these adventures had long-term adverse effects. For example, he tolerated the planning of a small-scale invasion of Cuba, which ultimately morphed into the Bay of Pigs disaster. And the U.S. is still suffering from the blowback of the CIA-backed overthrow in Iran in 1953.

As befalls many historians, an admiration for the subject of study leads to an accentuation of strong points and a diminution of failings. This book is not a hagiography, but Newton does manage a subtle skewing, in Ike’s favor, both in what he omits, and how he interprets that which he includes.

Evaluation: I found this book absorbing and entertaining. Since I already know something of Ike’s history, I slightly preferred the more succinct and focused “Ike’s Bluff” to this more comprehensive biography. Both books provide a very positive take on Eisenhower. Like any histories, they are best read in conjunction with other treatments from across the interpretive spectrum.

(JAB) ( )

This bio focuses on Ike's political life rather than his military career. Despite an unfortunate predilection for clandestine capers, Eisenhower presided over 8 pretty peaceful years. This book increased my respect for him and his caution as the US and the Soviet Union learned to deal with their nuclear arsenals. ( )