Drawing on a wealth of untapped primary sources, Smith provides new insight into Ike’s maddening apprenticeship under Douglas MacArthur in Washington and the Philippines. Then the whole panorama of World War II unfolds, with Eisenhower’s superlative generalship forging the Allied path to victory through multiple reversals of fortune in North Africa and Italy, culminating in the triumphant invasion of Normandy. Smith also gives us an intriguing examination of Ike’s finances, details his wartime affair with Kay Summersby, and reveals the inside story of the 1952 Republican convention that catapulted him to the White House.Smith’s chronicle of Eisenhower’s presidential years is as compelling as it is comprehensive. Derided by his detractors as a somnambulant caretaker, Eisenhower emerges in Smith’s perceptive retelling as both a canny politician and a skillful, decisive leader. Smith convincingly portrays an Eisenhower who engineered an end to America’s three-year no-win war in Korea, resisted calls for preventative wars against the Soviet Union and China, and boldly deployed the Seventh Fleet to protect Formosa from invasion.
This Eisenhower, Smith shows us, stared down Khrushchev over Berlin and forced the withdrawal of British, French, and Israeli forces from the Suez Canal. He managed not only to keep the peace after Ike made peace in Korea, not one American soldier was killed in action during his tenure but also to enhance America’s prestige in the Middle East and throughout the world.Domestically, Eisenhower reduced defense spending, balanced the budget, constructed the interstate highway system, and provided social security coverage for millions who were self-employed. Ike believed that traditional American values encompassed change and progress.
Unmatched in insight, Eisenhower in War and Peace at last gives us an Eisenhower for our time and for the ages.
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Background Information
Dwight D. Eisenhower rose above many more senior American officers to become Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe and later President of the United States. The United States Military Academy has been established at West Point on the Hudson River to train officers for the U.S. Army for more than two centuries. Douglas MacArthur commanded American troops in the war against Japan, but was dismissed as commander in Korea by President Truman. The Korean War was fought by United Nations forces, primarily from the United States, against the North Korean invaders of the South, and their Chinese allies. The Interstate Highway System was constructed to provide a national network of highways with consistent and efficient standards.