EISENHOWER: SOLDIER AND PRESIDENT
by Stephen E. Ambrose
ISBN 0-945707-39-8 $37.50
635 pages including notes, bibliography, index and maps.
Stephen E. Ambrose's highly praised two-volume biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower was hailed by John Keegan as "a magnificent biography." Robert J. Donovan called it "the best book to date on its subject... Of Eisenhower's high rank on the list of presidents there can be little doubt." Now, to commemorate the anniversary of Eisenhower's 100th birthday, Ambrose has revised and condensed his monumental work into one volume.
Drawing upon extensive sources, an unprecedented degree of scholarship, and numerous interviews with the subject himself, Ambrose offers the fullest, richest, most objective rendering yet of the soldier who became President. Ambrose traces Ike's early years and his nearly obscure career in the army before the Second World War. He gives us a masterful account of the European war theater and Eisenhower's magnificent leadership as Allied Supreme Commander. Describing in intimate detail Ike's decision to join the GOP and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering at the 1952 Republican Convention, Ambrose charts Eisenhower's sometimes uncomfortable transformation from general to university president to candidate for President of the United States. Ambrose's recounting of Eisenhower's presidency, the first of the Cold War, brings to life a man and a country struggling with issues as diverse as civil rights, atomic weapons, communism, and its new global role.
Along the way, Eisenhower follows the 34th President's relations with the people closest to him, most of all Mamie, his son John, and Kay Summersby, as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Harry Truman, Nixon, Dulles, Khrushchev, Joe McCarthy and, indeed, all the American and world leaders of his time.
The definitive biography of the only man in the twentieth century to achieve his country's highest military and civilian ranks, this superb interpretation of Eisenhower's life confirms Stephen Ambrose's' position as one of our finest historians.
