Skip to main content

Ike gets a makeover

By
Eisenhower appears to be the latest president under reconsideration for his achievements, although Ike has generally been held in high regard by historians for his bipartisanship and "hidden hand" approach.  I think most presidential polls by historians have him in the Top Ten.  Nevertheless, Jean Edward Smith feels compelled to remind us what a good president Dwight Eisenhower was in his new book, Eisenhower in War and Peace,

In recent years, the “I Like Ike” sentiment has gained momentum with biographers and historians, among them Michael Korda, Jim Newton, and now, Jean Edward Smith with his new biography of Eisenhower. Much as he did with his 2007 doorstop biography of FDR, in Eisenhower in War and Peace Smith sifts through mountains of earlier appraisals, anecdotes, and historical documents and synthesizes the information into a crisply written and meticulous analysis of Eisenhower.

It is a much taller order rescuing U.S. Grant from the bottom of the presidential barrel, which Smith tried to do in Grant. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. avrdsFebruary 27, 2012 at 3:16 PM

    I would be open to reading this one (I have it on my request list -- I reenlisted as a judge).

    Newton talked about Eisenhower in Los Angeles last year. Eisenhower's ideas about even basic civil rights were appalling but he believed in following orders and did that. But he also had many good things to say about Ike. I sometimes wonder if it takes a republican (or a Johnson -- sort of the same thing) to get some of these big spending bills like the highway act and the education initiatives through. Sort of the Nixon to China phenomena.

    And thanks for noting Smith is a man. For some reason all these years I thought he was a she.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonFebruary 27, 2012 at 3:59 PM

    I'd be up for Ike. I have his biography in the Schlesinger presidential series, which I believe Brand is now editor-in-chief. He is the only Republican president since TR that I can relate to. Not that Ike was in any way progressive, but at least he wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.

    I was surprised to see Smith take on Grant. I would think he focused on his pre-presidential days in the biography, as Grant's administration was racked with scandals. He is definitely bottom of the presidential barrel.

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsFebruary 27, 2012 at 4:10 PM

    That would be fun -- maybe we can all read different versions. May take me awhile to get the Smith bio, but I'll work it. I also read this one last year. Not a great book, but interesting case study on something I didn't know much about:

    http://www.amazon.com/Eisenhower-1956-Presidents-Crisis-Suez-Brink/dp/1439139334

    ReplyDelete
  4. TripplerFebruary 29, 2012 at 12:10 AM

    Ike does seem like a good read and I'm sure it is a decent choice for a group read.

    Well, I finally got a copy of "Fruitlands" by Richard Francis. Took a long time to get it. Hopefully, it will be worth the long wait.

    As for that book on Roger William, it's still not in either of our two library systems so I can't read it for now. Also, I'm just finishing up Chris Bohjalian's "The Double Bend". This is defo a good fictional read.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsFebruary 29, 2012 at 2:44 AM

    I'm in! Depending on what happens in the next couple weeks, I may also be reading the Newton bio.

    ReplyDelete
  6. James FergusonFebruary 29, 2012 at 7:50 AM

    ... but I can read Ike, although I will probably go with the book I already have.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

The People Debate the Constitution

By
As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified.  After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution.  Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through.  But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 .  The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others.  Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified.  A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.
166 comments
Read more