Scan barcode
Reviews
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The American Presidents Series: The 34th President, 1953-1961 by Tom Wicker
jordanjones's review
4.0
Good, brief biography of Ike
There is much to say critical about Eisenhower, and Wicker brings these topics up. Eisenhower gave Nixon too much of a platform. He didnât directly oppose Sen. Joseph McCarthy, but instead gave us the doctrine of âexecutive privilege.â He only reluctantly enforced Brown v. Board of Education, and while giving us the first modern equal rights legislation, gave us a lackluster law, with no real enforcement. And he supported anti-democratic coups in Guatemala and Iran, for which the United States is still paying penalties.
But Eisenhower also defused the Suez crisis, avoided a war with China, limited the engagement in Vietnam (it was Kennedy and later Johnson, Democrats who did not want to appear soft on communism, who escalated US involvement). He opposed what he termed in his farewell speech the âmilitary-industrial complex,â and the notion from Republican hawks and Democrats such as Kennedy, that there was a missile gap with the Soviets.
The real tragedy of the Eisenhower administration, called out eloquently in Wickerâs book, is how close the great soldier was to a nuclear test ban with the Soviet Union, and how his hubris and that of his subordinates led to the U-2 incident that gave Khrushchev the opportunity to storm out of the Paris talks.
Wicker writes well. There is a bone-head error in describing the time between the collapse of the May 1959 talks in Paris and the end of Eisenhowerâs presidency as â7 months,â when in fact it was nineteen. This should have been caught by the most junior copy editor. However, the book is well researched, and shows an overall strong understanding of the subject and the times, which Wicker had as a NY Times political correspondent when Eisenhower was still alive.
The nature of this series of presidential biographies is of course brevity, but Wickerâs book is one that feels like it covers the whole subject and does not skirt issues or portions of the life. Wickerâs reminisce of a trip with Eisenhower, one aide, and another reporter, during the 1962 campaign was an interesting coda and lead up to Wickerâs summary that Eisenhower was a great man, but not a great president.
There is much to say critical about Eisenhower, and Wicker brings these topics up. Eisenhower gave Nixon too much of a platform. He didnât directly oppose Sen. Joseph McCarthy, but instead gave us the doctrine of âexecutive privilege.â He only reluctantly enforced Brown v. Board of Education, and while giving us the first modern equal rights legislation, gave us a lackluster law, with no real enforcement. And he supported anti-democratic coups in Guatemala and Iran, for which the United States is still paying penalties.
But Eisenhower also defused the Suez crisis, avoided a war with China, limited the engagement in Vietnam (it was Kennedy and later Johnson, Democrats who did not want to appear soft on communism, who escalated US involvement). He opposed what he termed in his farewell speech the âmilitary-industrial complex,â and the notion from Republican hawks and Democrats such as Kennedy, that there was a missile gap with the Soviets.
The real tragedy of the Eisenhower administration, called out eloquently in Wickerâs book, is how close the great soldier was to a nuclear test ban with the Soviet Union, and how his hubris and that of his subordinates led to the U-2 incident that gave Khrushchev the opportunity to storm out of the Paris talks.
Wicker writes well. There is a bone-head error in describing the time between the collapse of the May 1959 talks in Paris and the end of Eisenhowerâs presidency as â7 months,â when in fact it was nineteen. This should have been caught by the most junior copy editor. However, the book is well researched, and shows an overall strong understanding of the subject and the times, which Wicker had as a NY Times political correspondent when Eisenhower was still alive.
The nature of this series of presidential biographies is of course brevity, but Wickerâs book is one that feels like it covers the whole subject and does not skirt issues or portions of the life. Wickerâs reminisce of a trip with Eisenhower, one aide, and another reporter, during the 1962 campaign was an interesting coda and lead up to Wickerâs summary that Eisenhower was a great man, but not a great president.
More...