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John Eisenhower is conspicuous among those of us who have had more than one career. A graduate of West Point, John followed his famous father into the army, and as a junior officer was witness to some historic moments of World War II. Subsequently, he emerged as a historian in his own right. Mr. Eisenhower's narrative of the Battle of the Bulge, "The Bitter Woods," and his history of the Mexican War, "So Far From God," reflect his broad interest in the military history of the past two centuries.
Although Mr. Eisenhower has seven books to his credit, he has not written specifically about his father until now. (There are, after all, many Eisenhower biographies, of which my personal favorite is that by Carlo d'Este.) "General Ike," as the subtitle makes clear, is not a full biography, but a series of essays that focus on Ike's dealings with important figures of the war years, most notably Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Generals George Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, and George Patton. Mr. Eisenhower's portraits inevitably cover some ground that is familiar to students of World War II, but they also include fresh insights.
One of the more trying periods of Ike's career came before the war, when he served as chief of staff to Douglas MacArthur, then head of a U.S. military mission to the Philippines. Mr. Eisenhower insists that his father's diary entries in this period exaggerate his differences with MacArthur, but most readers will conclude that the Army did well to keep Eisenhower and MacArthur far apart during World War II. But Mr. Eisenhower has kind words for both men, concluding that "Ike Eisenhower could never have played the role of Emperor of Japan as well as did MacArthur, and MacArthur could never have contended with Churchill and Montgomery, men he did not control, so well as Ike."
Dwight Eisenhower's long friendship with Patton is a matter of record, as is Ike's support for Patton in the wake of embarrassing wartime episodes, including two instances in which Patton abused soldiers whom he viewed as malingerers. But, Mr. Eisenhower points out, Ike's tolerance lasted only as long as Patton's talents seemed essential to winning the war. When, after Germany's surrender, Patton delivered a speech in which he suggested that Nazis were not that much different from America's Democrats and Republicans, Ike sacked him. Mr. Eisenhower was visiting his father at the time and quotes him as saying, "I'm not firing George for what he has done; I'm firing him for what he'll do next."
Ike found Marshall the easiest of his illustrious contemporaries to work with. Although Marshall had wanted to command the invasion of Europe, once Roosevelt settled on Ike as supreme commander, Marshall gave him unstinting support.
Mr. Eisenhower shares his father's respect for Marshall, but has some personal insights. It seems to me that forbidding himself the warmth of wide friendships outside his immediate family made Marshall's a barren life. To the outsider he seemed determined never to be friends with his subordinates. He never made any effort to develop a personal relationship with Ike off duty, no matter their mutual respect professionally.
Ike's most difficult wartime relationship was, of course, that with the prickly Montgomery. Much of the friction grew out of Montgomery's desire to lead a single, deep thrust into Germany as opposed to a broader advance that would make full use of the Allies' advantage in numbers. Mr. Eisenhower's discussion of this issue is one of the strong points of his book, and serves to underscore the great power that Ike, as supreme commander, had over the allocation of scarce resources such as gasoline.
The book abounds in anecdotes, and one of the better ones relates to Montgomery, who was notorious for his refusal to allow smoking or drinking in his presence. When, after his victory at El Alamein, Montgomery chose to entertain a captured German general, von Thoma, at dinner, he was roundly criticized in the British press. Churchill fended off the criticism with the remark, "Alas, poor Thoma. I too have dined with Montgomery."
Mr. Eisenhower addresses - somewhat gingerly - the question of whether his father was a "great general."
He dismisses Mongomery's insistence that a great general must experience battle at all command levels, noting that this criterion would have eliminated men such as Caesar and Robert E. Lee. The author notes, with respect to Ike's strategic grasp, that he had graduated first in his class at the command and general staff school at Fort Leavenworth. But Mr. Eisenhower suggests that his father's great gift was his ability to manage strong-willed associates for the common good:
"His relations with . . . Montgomery serve as a case in point. Time and time again, Ike put up with the foibles, discourtesies, and downright arrogance of his official subordinate, while at the same time insisting that his major decisions be carried out."
Much the same might be said of his dealings with Patton.
Mr. Eisenhower was fortunate to have been close to his father at some crucial junctures of World War II. Students of the war are now fortunate that he has committed his recollections to print.

While most of us remember Ike Eisenhower as a former President, his son, John Eisenhower chose to cover the military leader version of this great man.

In General Ike, John D. Eisenhower offers a tribute from a affectionate and admiring son to a great and highly respected father.

According to John D. Eisenhower, his father Ike cared far more about his career in uniform than about his time in the White House.

This book reveals the many facets of a talented, driven, headstrong, yet diplomatic leader--Ike Eisenhower.

People with a military background in particular will enjoy this book. All Americans should read this book.

With 825 pages devoted to a period of three years, David Eisenhower, the grandson of DDE, has ample space to provide an intricate look at his grandfather at war. This book is primarily focused on the preparation and execution of Normandy through to the formal capitulation of Germany.

The author, presenting the rivalries between allied generals, the political machinations of Roosevelt, Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and the seemingly unfathomable Stalin, shows the extreme patience, diplomacy, and fortitude required of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expedition Forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to win the war in Europe.

Eisenhower: At War, 1943-1945, expertly dissects the relationships between allied parties while describing the utter destruction of Germany. It is thorough and frequently thrilling. Patton, Bradley, and Montgomery receive appropriate attention as does Normandy and the Ardennes offensive most commonly referred to as the Battle of the Bulge. I recommend the book highly and rate it an enthusiastic 4 stars.

grandpa. I've been meaning to read At War for some time specifically to to get David Eisenhower's perpective. It's a perpective most historians would kill for. As a kid David had the run of the White House. The familiarity he gained from comtemporaries of his grandfather-generals, aides, heads of state, friends & even other historians was invaluable. His admits this. The book look daunting at first glance, but is quite readable & I was able to stay with it for hours at a time. ha-mevaker is correct. This is a political rather than a military view of the war in Europe. Military matters are of course the backdrop for the political intrigues Ike is subjected to. The personal stories are appreciated & humanize the whole horrible war: The young private from Abeliene simply walking up to Eisenhower"s H.Q. & demanding of the guard to see Ike. He got his audience with the general as well as a signed note as proof to his buddies. The book is peppered with little stories like that. The Eisenhower-Montgomery feud is covered extensively. Surprisingly, David is more even handed & perhaps more understanding of Monty's motives than other American historians have been. By D-Day Britain was finished. She was bankrupted, & would never regain her former glory. Montgomery knew this well. The men lost could not be replaced. Yet he wanted one last moment in the sun for Great Britain, that of a spearhead into Germany & the capture of Berlin by the English (& himself). In this plan he was over-ruled by Eisenhower, his superior, a general with no battlefield experience. He was a great patriot & it galled him that by this point the British Empire was the junior partner in the U.S./British alliance. Churchill was proponent a defeating Germany thru Italy & did not support the Normandy invasion. He experienced the carnage of World War I trench warfare feared a repeat if a frontal assault was attempted. Eisenhower greatest strength was he wasn't fighting the last war as many of the people around him were. He was fighting the war he had before him & he did it quite well.

This is the first part of what David Eisenhower's intended political biography of his grandfather. The main thrust of the book is how Eisenhower's decisions in WW II were made, and the tensions that existed in the USA/British alliance during the war. The Anvil/Dragoon controversy is given full length because it was one of the most contended points of the allaince. The fighting of the war is distinctly in the background. It isn't clear to me how much personal analysis David Eisenhower put into the fighting aspect of the book. In a number of places it seems that he relys on the historians. Because of this, I think that it is important to keep in mind that this probably isn't an important book in terms of military history, even though it is very important in terms of understanding the political aspects of the war. Almost all the other books on WW II ignore the political aspects.

Robert A. Divine's Eisenhower and the Cold War is a decidedly pro-Eisenhower treatment of American foreign policy during the Republican administration of the 1950s. Divine's Eisenhower is far from the do-nothing Ike whom critics have accused of deferring foreign policy to his subordinates; he is, on the contrary, a rational, calculating, active force exercising full control over decisions involving American security. Blessed with charm, self-confidence even in the midst of crises, and remarkable self-constraint, Divine's Ike appears as an exceptional, perhaps "great" President, unique among post-World War II American Presidents for his broad background in international affairs. Certainly, the author concedes that Eisenhower had certain shortcomings, such as a touchy sensitivity to public criticism and a European-oriented view of the world. Nevertheless, this book dwells heavily on Ike's foreign policy successes: bringing the Korean war to an end within six months of taking office, keeping America out of the crisis over the Suez Canal, refusing to intervene by arms and men in Indochina and Red China, refusing to force a showdown with the Soviets over Berlin, ending the atmospheric explosions of nuclear weapons. All the while, Divine's Eisenhower carefully guides foreign policy on a tough yet moderate course, seeking to decrease Cold War tensions while balancing economic and political imperatives alongside national security requirements.

Divine breaks this study up into four sections: Eisenhower as President, Massive Retaliation and Asia, the Middle East, and the Russians. (He admits that this is no full-scale treatment of Ike's foreign policy.) Divine relies on secondary sources to achieve his objective, namely to demonstrate that "Ike was skillful and active in directing American foreign policy" and to explain why Eisenhower failed in the end to meet his peace objectives. The author asserts that Ike desperately wanted to reduce Cold War anxieties and lessen the threat of nuclear war while also keeping defense spending low. Given these constraints, Ike came to rely more on the threat of nuclear strikes than on the dispersion of American combat forces to all the world's hot spots. While Ike's critics have charged him with deferring foreign policy decisionmaking to Secretary of State Dulles and other close aides, Divine shows that Eisenhower pulled all the strings, often choosing to restrain the anti-Communist zeal of Dulles and to disregard the advice of military advisors. The successes he achieved have been neglected or misunderstood, Divine argues, because they were indirect in execution and negative in realization. In other words, the events that Ike was able to prevent (such as a nuclear war) were more important than any positive, sweeping accomplishments. This kind of success, Divine contends, becomes more evident when compared to the pitfalls of Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s. Basically, Ike's Presidency is seen as a triumph for common sense and rational decision-making, constrained only by Ike's tendency to see all Third World disturbances as a result of Communist agitation. Nevertheless, had Gary Powers not been shot down and captured by the Soviets on the eve of the Paris summit with Khrushchev, Divine implies that Ike may have secured some of the far-reaching success he had been pursuing throughout his years in office.

Divine's pro-Eisenhower rhetoric gets a bit thick at times. Ike's failures seem due either to the faults of the men around him or to capricious events of chance. The U-2 affair is a case in point. Divine seems to say that Eisenhower had little choice other than to act as he did--namely, lying initially about the true nature of the incident; beyond this, we are told that Ike--on several occasions--wanted to stop flying spy missions over Russia in the days preceding the Paris summit. Because of the U-2 debacle, Divine says Ike was powerless during his final months in office to deal with emerging problems in Cuba, northern Africa, and Southeast Asia--the President was a victim, a "prisoner of events." While the author claims to recognize Eisenhower's weaknesses in conducting foreign policy, he seems always ill-disposed to criticize the President for them.

A very good, quick read book. Excellent source of information. Reveals many misunderstandings of the Eisenhower administration. If you have an interest in The Cold War, here is the man that but some teeth into US policy (right, wrong, or otherwise)

Kay Summersby's book is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the Supreme Allied Headquarters during World War II. She writes clearly and consicely about the organization that helped win World War II in Europe, and provides key details about the personalities and relationships between such notable historical figures such as Eisenhower, Churchill, Montgomery, Patton, Bradley, and such.

However, the nature of her relationship with General Dwight D. Eisenhower is the central theme of the book and she repeatedly alludes to their stolen moments together. To a person, all others on Eisenhower's staff deny her accusations, including Eisenhower before his death, and can refute most of her stories of their love. For example, she describes in candid detail interludes and rendevous they supposedly shared, but at the time of many of these, Eisenhower was away from his headquarters or with others, including his wife and/or son.

In her first book, "Eisenhower Was My Boss," written in 1947, she makes no mention of this romantic relationship. Why, then, 30 years later, did she expose the "truth." Perhaps it was because she was on her death bed and looking back on a life unfulfilled. She had two failed marriages, no children, and no job history. A fantasized relationship with Eisenhower, one of the most powerful men in history, could be her legacy.

Aside from the falacious story of the relationship with Eisenhower, "Past Forgetting" is a good read if you are interested in the manner in which World War II in Europe was fought and won on both the political and military fronts.

This book by a dying Kay Summersby is a poignant account of what can happen when a man and a woman are thrown into a wartime work relationship that is unrelentingly stressful and from which neither dare retreat.

In her book, written largely from memory, Kay has no regrets and makes no accusations. She treats her infatuation and love for her near-genius and overstressed boss, Dwight Eisenhower, with grace and sensitive restraint, focusing more on the emotional than the physical. Her book reveals how their extreme discression ensured that virtually no one on Eisenhower's staff understood their special relationship. Anyone who has read the book will understand the post-war denials of truth by those on the periphery of Eisenhower's inner circle. Both knew that when the war ended their love affair also had to end. It is a very personal story without a storybook ending.

Her book gives first-hand insight into the personalities and quirks of the major leaders of WW2. Kay treated the emotional aspects of her mutual relationship with Eisenhower with honesty and objectivity. It was a story that needed telling.

Believe it or not I do not think I had ever heard how Dwight D. Eisenhower got the nickname of "Ike" before I read this juvenile biography by Jack C. Harris. His brother Edgar was called "Big Ike" and as a baby Dwight liked him so much everyone started calling him "Little Ike." This book is filled with lots of interesting details about Eisenhower's life (he almost went to the Naval Academy instead of West Point), and sketches out how as a brigadier general he was brought to Washington, D.C. after Pearl Harbor by General George C. Marshall and eventually put in charge of the Normandy invasion and all the Allie troops in Europe. However, while this book is solid on the key details of Eisenhower's life, young readers will not get much of a sense of why Eisenhower was the right man for the job or his political views when he ran for President. Then again, there was not much to his candidacy beyond the "We like Ike" slogan. After all, the man was going to be elected President, all he had to do was decide which party he belonged to (it turned out to be Republican). This book is illustrated with over two dozen historic black & white photographs, including one of Chief Commander Eisenhower and the generals who helped win World War II (including Patton and Bradley). Ultimately, this book serves as a solid introduction to the life of Eisenhower.

You need to understand that this is a college text book and as a result, the writing is a little inflated. That being said, the author presents a good premise and makes his case very well, showing how Eisenhower's use of public relations agencies, Robert Montgomery, and others helped the GOP and the President in particular fare very well in the public's eye. The account of how the Presidential news conference was created (to avoid the President's message from being "interpreted" by the reporters or having the press neglect the message the White House wanted to get out) is very informative and something viewers of modern day news conference should keep in mind as well. Good book that also goes a long way in dispelling the notion that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a do-nothing President.

Eisenhower Declassified, by Virgil Pinckley, is noteworthy in that Pinckley knew Ike as a wartime correspondent, and then later as a friend. Today we would have trouble believing the press and a general could get along. Pinckley writes as a correspondent who was with Ike. He was close enough to Ike to have been invited to Eisenhower's funeral by the Eisenhower family

Michael Beschloss is one of the best historians writing today. Known best for his work profiling American presidents, this book focuses on Ike's last years framed by the ongoing, growing military rivalry between the Cold War superpowers. Packed with detail, it is loaded with more information and behind-the-scenes nuggets than I ever kne existed regarding the famous U-2 incident. Knowing some of the people in the program, I certainly learned more about the times discussed and some of the issues involved from the book than from them. The extreme secrecy involved still persists among them today; the book is the best source I have to learn what was happening in those tense days. Mayday is a very well-written book, and has a lot of useful infomration. It would be best enjoyed by Cold War enthusiasts and fans of the period, but its writing and style make it easy to read and comprehend for all.

Well, if you want to read the experience from academia, go right ahead. For a better insight, see Michael Beschloss or Ike's own biographer, Stephen Ambrose. This book was a hit in the scholastic arena but never caught on in mainstream

Greenstein was not the first but has certainly assembled the most coherent argument for a fundamental reassessment of Ike's presidency.

Common wisdom held Ike to be a somewhat dodering, benevolent and detached president who routinely mangled english syntax in his press conferences. He is seen as surrounded by powerful men who ran government as THEY saw fit.

Greenstein shows repeatedly that Ike was a deft behind-the-scenes mover and shaker who held all the reins of power in HIS hands. He consistently refused to engage in "personalities" and would deal with political challenges with tact and persuasion, often hidden from public light. His handling of McCarthy, often seen as a do-nothing approach, is re-examined in a new light. Eisenhower is seen pre-empting McCarthy consistently while also refusing to publicly engage him, which in Ike's mind, would have served to legitimize him (McCarthy) in many eyes.

Finaly, Ike has been critized for relying too much on a rigid and formal system of staff and infomation processing. His background in the Army, many critics contend, made him a stickler for procedure. This much is true. However, he used his considerable charm and intellect to draw on a wide group of people (all white and male) to augment his formal structures. Many blame the dismantling of the fromal advising structure by Kennedy to his lack of information during the Bay of Pigs.

A good book for Eisenhower specialists, policital scientists studying the organizational presidency, and presidential students of all stripes.

In the preface to this landmark book on the Eisenhower presidency, Greenstein talks about how he had begun a project on presidential leadership, with a quick stop at the Eisenhower Library to get confirmation that Eisenhower was as hands-off as possible, a doddering old fool who let his underlings run the country whilst Ike played golf. But as Greenstein looked at the research in front of him, he discovered Eisenhower was much more of a hands-on president than most accepted. He worked behind the scenes, however, hence this "hidden-hand" description.

Greenstein's book on Eisenhower is significant for all students of Eisenhower. Most revisionist scholars of Eisenhower were also Stevenson supporters in the '50s, and have come away with a better understanding of how Ike worked, and his handling of major crises. (Anyone who thinks the 1950s was "Leave it to Beaver" or "Happy Days" is poorly mis-informed and needs to take himself to the public library to look at all the brinksmanship reported in the newspapers and newsmagazines of the time.)

In this book, Greenstein offers his argument, and then goes through a series of case-studies to look at how Eisenhower worked actively behind the scenes to accomplish his goals.

This is indeed a landmark book for scholars. The general reader, however, may be overwhelmed by the academic use of language. For them, the two-volume book on Eisenhower by Ambrose may be a better book to read.

Stephen Ambrose is a great author and historian, but I am annoyed with this book. From page 183 on, this book is a near exact copy of _Citizen Soliders_. Citizen Soldiers covers the fighting from after D-Day to V-E day, focusing on the enlisted and NCO's. In _Victors_ from about page 180 to the end, the text seems to be lifted verbatim from that excellent book. I haven't read all his D-Day and Eisenhower books, but I imagine that the first section borrows heavily from that. The bottom line is that this is a nice book, but if you've read his other books, it's not new. Think of this as Ambrose's "Greatest Hits" and you have the idea. Still, on it's own, it's a good book, especially for the budding historian.

This book is a compilation of several of Ambrose's earlier histories of Eisenhower and WWII. Having read "D-Day," I recommend his earlier books for a more thorough understanding of what went on. In reading about the drive to victory after D-Day, I, at times, felt that there were blanks to be filled in; that I was not getting the full picture. Nonetheless, this is still a fine book because it gives vivid descriptions of the hardships, privations and fears that the American and British soldiers had to overcome. After the landing at Normandy, there was still much horrific fighting that had to be done to ultimately win the war in Europe.

What I found particularly interesting was Ambrose's explanation as to why there were many duds among the shells launched by the Germans against the Allied positions. Shells made in American and British factories were of high quality and reliable. These shells were made by a free people in support of the war effort. On the other hand, German artillary shells were manufactured largely by slave labor. These slaves had no interest in furthering the German war effort. Therefore, whenever they could get away with it, the laborers pulled off little tricks such as mixing sand with the powder or whatever else they thought would get past the inspectors. I believe that this explantion of duds is a microcosm of what ultimately lead to the Allied victory. Ultimately, the free labor of the Allies did a better job of supplying its troops, and the citizen soldiers, in times of great hardship and privation, were better able to push on. However, make no mistake, many German soldiers were highly motivated and extremely driven to succeed as the hard fought final Nazi offensive at the Bulge proved. But, in the final drive to victory, including the battle of the Bulge, the Allied soldiers, that Ambrose lionizes, had that little extra.

The great contribution of this, and other Ambrose books, is to give a full appreciation of how ordinary American young men, rose to the occasion and accomplished valiant deeds that Hitler could never have anticipated. Again, this book leaves some gaps in the narrative that the original books to not but on the whole, Ambrose accomplishes his goal, to get us to empathize with and appreciate our courageous forefathers of the WWII era.

No one has been more prolific or entertaining in his efforts to bring the gritty, unit-level personal experiences of the Allied drive from Normandy into Germany to the public's attention than Stephen Ambrose. In his series of books including "D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War Two", "Citizen Soldiers", "Band Of Brothers", and the present book, "The Victors", he has masterfully employed a little-known treasure trove of personal interviews with thousands of Allied soldiers to marshal an absolutely absorbing, captivating, and insightful treatise on the nature of combat as experienced by the men and women in the forefront of action as it transpired all along the front.

In this volume he uses vignettes and stories told in the other books mentioned above to weave an overall summary of the American soldier's experience in the eleven-month struggle to liberate Europe. He includes stories of individual battles, personal privations, acts of individual sacrifice and surprising courage, and in doing so with these true accounts of men in battle weaves a tale depicting the unbelievable human cost of the war. This book, as with the others, brings the life of a soldier into bold relief, and relates the spellbinding story of men in combat in a way made more vivid, vital, and personal than is possible in any other way. By filling the pages with men we comes to know better than in his other books, we watch with amazement as they moved into free fire zones where anything that moves dies, and in the process Ambrose paints an indelible portrait of the unbelievable madness of war.

This is a story that should be told again and again, so we never forget what it took to take back Europe from the beasts who first stole it so savagely, of the men who died on the beaches, who fell for freedom in the surrounding countryside, all to prepare for those like this company of ordinary men who relentlessly pushed deeper and deeper into the interior of France, finally pushing the battered and beaten Germans all the way back to Berlin. This was the single greatest adventure of the 20th century, an epic struggle in which millions of Brits, Canadians, Australians, Frenchmen, and Americans took back by force of arms the liberty and freedom that had been wrested away from the mainland so cruelly four years before. This, then, is the story of how that crusade to liberate Europe unfolded through the personal experiences of a small group of American soldiers.

Mr. Ambrose has become a virtual cottage industry in the World War Two section of your local bookstore, while he has also published works such as his recent best seller on explorers Lewis and Clark. Meanwhile, he has become phenomenally successful because many of his books have captured the public's imagination by being so readable, entertaining, and informative. While popular success doesn't always equate to critical worthiness, in his case it consistently seems to. This is a wonderfully worthwhile, eminently researched, exhaustively documented, and superbly narrated book on the most historic struggle in the long and painful struggle to finally liberate Europe. Enjoy!