Eisenhower

July 14, 2014
Accomplished historian and biographer Johnson (Churchill) produces an engaging, if bizarrely brief, survey of the life of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Johnson’s work covers all the major facets of Eisenhower’s career, beginning with his boyhood in rural Kansas and ending with his tenure as president of the United States. It is not a serious academic biography, but rather an overview of Eisenhower’s life, with an emphasis on his personality and character, including his flair for public relations. Where Johnson addresses Eisenhower-as-president, he emphasizes his deviousness and intentional manipulation of his public image to obscure his own high intelligence. Johnson views Eisenhower positively and asserts that Eisenhower not being a combat general but a staff officer for most of his career contributed to his success as president. Johnson’s contribution will serve as a great introduction to “Ike” the man, but anyone interested in the details of WWII generalship or the politics of the Eisenhower administration will have to look elsewhere.

July 15, 2014
When he left office in 1961, historians considered DwightEisenhower (1890-1969) a second-rate president. His reputation's steady rise isnot interrupted by this admiring, opinionated account by veteran Britishjournalist and historian Johnson (Mozart,2013, etc.).Although he remained in the United States during World WarII and spent two decades in the shrunken peacetime Army, Eisenhower's talentswere well-known. Gen. Douglas MacArthur kept him as an aide for nine years, andGeorge Marshall summoned him to Washington a week after Pearl Harbor.Commanding the largest military force in history (20 times the size ofMacArthur's), Eisenhower kept Allied generals focused on the effort against theNazis, even when they were often fighting among themselves. Victory made him anational hero, and he easily won the 1952 election over Democratic nomineeAdlai Stevenson. During the 1950s, the prospect of World War III seemedimminent. Several joint chiefs wanted to get on with it, but Eisenhower keptthe military firmly under his thumb. He receives credit for ending the KoreanWar but little for refusing to strike back at China's threats to Formosa; hismilitary advisers were raring to go. Despite national panic that followed theSoviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, Eisenhower quashed efforts to launchcrash military programs. John F. Kennedy, a far more aggressive Cold Warrior,spent the 1960 campaign denouncing Eisenhower for underestimating the communistthreat. Johnson astutely points out that Eisenhower enjoyed being presidentsince, unlike generals Washington, Jackson and Grant, his best qualities werenot those of a warrior but a staff officer: efficiency, administration, economyand flexibility.A 120-page monograph cannot replace a complete biography,the best being Jean Edward Smith's Eisenhowerin War and Peace (2012). Though Johnson's well-known right-wing viewsdeliver an occasional jolt, this book remains a thoroughly entertainingintroduction.

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August 1, 2014
There's a fine line to writing effective biography. After all, how do you capture the story of a life? How can an author be fair when one person sees a blunder and another a triumph? More often than not, biographies are massive tomes that either have axes to grind or attempt to pack every bit in. Not so with Johnson's work. His lean portrait of Eisenhower works precisely because it is so stripped down. It avoids the quotidian navel-gazing that can make biography sound like the back pages of a weekly celebrity tabloid. Look: Ike eats breakfast, just like us! There he is buying toilet paper, just like us! Johnson paints in broad strokes. His prose proceeds at a fast clip, which makes for an ideal primer for novices or for those looking to brush up on America's thirty-fourth president. If such a person exists, this would be an ideal beach book for an Eisenhower enthusiast. All kidding aside, the book is a satisfying snapshot of a life dedicated to public service.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)