Rating: 
Summary: Beware of Schlesinger
Review: Arthur Schlesinger's involvement in anything Republican can mean nothing more than an opportunity for him to denounce the subject at hand, and this diatribe is no exception. This book does not do justice to one of the greatest leaders, military and political, of the 20th century. For real insight into Eisenhower, pick up Stephen E. Ambrose's works. How Schlesinger, at his advanced age is able to edit anything other than the minced food at the home is beyone me. Avoid anything associated with him at all possible costs!!! Would give this book a negative rating, if available.
Rating:
Summary: Beware of Schlesinger
Review: Arthur Schlesinger's involvement in anything Republican can mean nothing more than an opportunity for him to denounce the subject at hand, and this diatribe is no exception. This book does not do justice to one of the greatest leaders, military and political, of the 20th century. For real insight into Eisenhower, pick up Stephen E. Ambrose's works. How Schlesinger, at his advanced age is able to edit anything other than the minced food at the home is beyone me. Avoid anything associated with him at all possible costs!!! Would give this book a negative rating, if available.
Rating:
Summary: A Weak Entry In An Otherwise Strong Series
Review: I have read all of the books in the "American Presidents" series published thus far, and this is a very disappointing entry in an otherwise great series. Tom Wicker is a journalist, not a historian, and it shows. He merely presents a narrative chronology of Eisenhower's presidency, devoting only a few paragraphs to his life before he entered the Oval Office. In what is essentially a long magazine article, you never learn a thing about Eisenhower as a person, and Eisenhower emerges as a two-dimensional figure, not the fascinating man that he was. Worst of all, Wicker is so one-sided in his coverage, he tries to find fault in even Eisenhower's unmitigated successes. This ends up simply a book-length critique. It is blinkered and one-sided, with no sense of perspective or context. There are many better biogrpahies of Eisenhower available. Skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Another take.....
Review: I thought I'd present an alternative viewpoint to the obviously irate folks who have written so far. While Wicker's book is far from a complete biography (this series -- and I have read all but the TR volume -- was never intended to be THE definitive account, only an introduction of sorts), it does present Eisenhower's presidency in relatively comprehensive terms. I was left wanting more, but one can take this book, armed with a general outline, and pursue the subject further.As for the negative tone, I am not offended, nor am I disappointed. There have been plenty of fawning biographies written about Ike (check out any Ambrose volume), so it is only fair that we get a different take. Ike's presidency, like so many, had its shining moments, but also its shame. Wicker correctly identifies Ike's weaknesses, including a tendency to overdelegate and of course, a reluctant, weak-willed enforcement of civil rights laws. It is also important to note that Ike failed to take on that era's most poisonous demagogue, Joseph McCarthy. Writing a hagiography would be easy given our country's worship of military figures, but this is a political biography. The years from 1953 to 1961 were not perfect, and Wicker understands that the leadership must be held accountable for some of that decade's less admirable turns.
Rating: 
Summary: A good, brief biography of Eisenhower the president
Review: One reviewer complained that this was not a complete biography, and that is certainly correct. It is a biography of Eisenhower as president, in a series devoted to covering the American presidents. That is the focus of the series, and most of the books in this series ought to share that focus. Apart from a biography on William Henry Harrison and Garfield, the emphasis on all these books should be on the presidential career of each individual. I will confess that I am an admirer of General Eisenhower, but not of President Eisenhower. He certainly did count many achievements to his credit during his two terms of office, but his administrations were marred by some utterly dreadful events, and not a few failures to take strong moral stands by Eisenhower himself. His administration also established several unfortunate precedents, such as overthrowing foreign governments. Wicker focuses more on the failures than the achievements, but the most he can be accused of here is a slight--and I think it is very slight indeed--lack of balance. In the more recent presidents, we tend sometimes to see what we want to see, and many simply do not want to see the failures of his years in office. The general assessment of Eisenhower as president is that he had some real achievements in foreign policy but fared far worse in domestic policy. On the former, he is credited with keeping the United States out of war (and getting us out of Korea) during the increasing tension of the Cold War. He also, in what I believe was his greatest moment as president on the foreign front, intervened strongly when France and Britain attempted to seize control of the Suez Canal in conjunction with an Israeli invasion of the Sinai. As Wicker correctly points out, however, this has to be balanced with the tragedy of the Gary Powers incident, which sabotaged a probable arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Worse, Eisenhower supported some morally reprehensible covert operations in Iraq (where we deposed a popular leader and replaced him with the Shah), Guatemala (where we deposed a democratically elected government), and in Cuba (where Eisenhower's folks undertook the planning for what later became the Bay of Pigs--Kennedy's greatest failure being not to reject the plan entirely). Eisenhower also is responsible for our initial involvement in Vietnam, which would deepen tragically in the Kennedy and Johnson years. Wicker does a fine job of covering the domestic issues, although I think he draws back from a rather obvious conclusion (though many other writers do not): Eisenhower, although himself a moral, good individual, was at best morally timid and at worst a moral coward. In the terms used my countless ministers in my own Southern Baptist church, Eisenhower engaged in sins of omission. He lamented the Brown v. Board of Education, and failed to support it or implement it, although he did intervene in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas when our governor Orville Faubus refused to allow the integration of Central High School. But overall, Eisenhower had a dreadful record on Civil Rights, and we know from numerous personal comments--many of which Wicker records--that he was personally not very sensitive on racial matters (and that is putting it somewhat mildly). Also, despite personally deploring Senator Joe McCarthy and his tactics, Eisenhower did not intervene for several years of his presidency and did not condemn McCarthy publicly. Especially tragic was his failure to defend his patron George Marshall, one of America's great public servants (both in running WW II from Washington and later in his tremendous service in the State Department) from explicit charges of treason by McCarthy. On the other hand, Eisenhower did oversee the creation of NASA (though he wouldn't promote it the way that Kennedy did upon becoming president, for whom going to the moon was a mania). Wicker does point out briefly his great achievement in overseeing the building of the Interstate Highway system, and spends rather more time on his largely ineffectual attempt to convince the American populace that no missile or nuclear gap existed between the US and the USSR. Ironically, during the Eisenhower years, it was the Democrats who were pushing for more military spending, with Ike convinced that the US had more than enough to deter and defeat the Soviet Union in any forthcoming war. Significant mention is made of Eisenhower's farewell address, the first significant farewell since Washington's. In that he warned of the expanding influence of the Military-Industrial complex, a warning that we have not yet heeded. Wicker also does a good job of discussing the bizarre lack of support that Eisenhower gave Nixon, a lack that undermined Nixon's campaign in an excruciatingly tight election that might have cost him the presidency. It remains one of Eisenhower's most perplexing failures. Although I myself would have preferred Kennedy to Nixon, there is good reason to believe that Eisenhower negatively affected the outcome of the election, from a Republican point of view. This is a good, brief book on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Wicker, although admiring of Ike as a man, is unsympathetic to him as a president. But I would argue that he is fair. If one wants a full-length biography of Eisenhower, one could turn to Stephen Ambrose's two-volume biography, or Carlo D'Este's superb biography of Eisenhower's military career.
Rating:
Summary: A good, brief biography of Eisenhower the president
Review: One reviewer complained that this was not a complete biography, and that is certainly correct. It is a biography of Eisenhower as president, in a series devoted to covering the American presidents. That is the focus of the series, and most of the books in this series ought to share that focus. Apart from a biography on William Henry Harrison and Garfield, the emphasis on all these books should be on the presidential career of each individual. I will confess that I am an admirer of General Eisenhower, but not of President Eisenhower. He certainly did count many achievements to his credit during his two terms of office, but his administrations were marred by some utterly dreadful events, and not a few failures to take strong moral stands by Eisenhower himself. Wicker focuses more on the failures than the achievements, but the most he can be accused of here is a slight--and I think it is very slight indeed--lack of balance. In the more recent presidents, we tend sometimes to see what we want to see, and many simply do not want to see the failures of his years in office. The general assessment of Eisenhower as president is that he had some real achievements in foreign policy but fared far worse in domestic policy. On the former, he is credited with keeping the United States out of war (and getting us out of Korea) during the increasing tension of the Cold War. He also, in what I believe was his greatest moment as president on the foreign front, intervened strongly when France and Britain attempted to seize control of the Suez Canal in conjunction with an Israeli invasion of the Sinai. As Wicker correctly points out, however, this has to be balanced with the tragedy of the Gary Powers incident, which sabotaged a probable arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Worse, Eisenhower supported some morally reprehensible covert operations in Iraq (where we deposed a popular leader and replaced him with the Shah), Guatemala (where we deposed a democratically elected government), and in Cuba (where Eisenhower's folks undertook the planning for what later became the Bay of Pigs--Kennedy's greatest failure being not to reject the plan entirely). Eisenhower also is responsible for our initial involvement in Vietnam, which would deepen tragically in the Kennedy and Johnson years. Wicker does a fine job of covering the domestic issues, although I think he draws back from a rather obvious conclusion (though many other writers do not): Eisenhower, although himself a moral, good individual, was at best morally timid and at worst a moral coward. In the terms used my countless ministers in my own Southern Baptist church, Eisenhower engaged in sins of omission. He lamented the Brown v. Board of Education, and failed to support it or implement it, although he did intervene in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas when our governor Orville Faubus refused to allow the integration of Central High School. But overall, Eisenhower had a dreadful record on Civil Rights, and we know from numerous personal comments--many of which Wicker records--that he was personally not very sensitive on racial matters (and that is putting it somewhat mildly). Also, despite personally deploring Senator Joe McCarthy and his tactics, Eisenhower did not intervene for several years of his presidency and did not condemn McCarthy publicly. Especially tragic was his failure to defend his patron George Marshall, one of America's great public servants (both in running WW II from Washington and later in his tremendous service in the State Department) from explicit charges of treason by McCarthy. On the other hand, Eisenhower did oversee the creation of NASA (though he wouldn't promote it the way that Kennedy did upon becoming president, for whom going to the moon was a mania). Wicker does point out briefly his great achievement in overseeing the building of the Interstate Highway system, and spends rather more time on his largely ineffectual attempt to convince the American populace that no missile or nuclear gap existed between the US and the USSR. Ironically, during the Eisenhower years, it was the Democrats who were pushing for more military spending, with Ike convinced that the US had more than enough to deter and defeat the Soviet Union in any forthcoming war. Significant mention is made of Eisenhower's farewell address, the first significant farewell since Washington's. In that he warned of the expanding influence of the Military-Industrial complex, a warning that we have not yet heeded. Wicker also does a good job of discussing the bizarre lack of support that Eisenhower gave Nixon, a lack that undermined Nixon's campaign in an excruciatingly tight election that might have cost him the presidency. It remains one of Eisenhower's most perplexing failures. Although I myself would have preferred Kennedy to Nixon, there is good reason to believe that Eisenhower negatively affected the outcome of the election, from a Republican point of view. This is a good, brief book on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Wicker, although admiring of Ike as a man, is unsympathetic to him as a president. But I would argue that he is fair. If one wants a full-length biography of Eisenhower, one could turn to Stephen Ambrose's two-volume biography, or Carlo D'Este's superb biography of Eisenhower's military career.
Rating: 
Summary: Workmanlike
Review: Some might argue that the job Tom Wicker has done here is a perfect fit for the Eisenhower presidency - workmanlike, efficient, strong enough to keep your interest but not compelling enough to make the reader feel like an expert on the President or develop a strong viewpoint about him. ... I would have liked a little more. (Something, for instance, on the Interstate Highway system would have been helpful. Or his views/feelings on postwar culture.)
Rating: 
Summary: For God's sake, get over it
Review: Tom Wicker begins this book by informing us that in 1956, as a working journalist, he took up a newsroom collection for Eisenhower's opponent in the fall election, Adlai Stevenson. Despite that [amt]donation, Eisenhower somehow duped the rest of the country into voting for him.
In short, that's the gist of this book, Wicker's attempt some 50 years later to explain why he didn't vote for Eisenhower. He succeeds in dragging in for the book's 150 pages every liberal interpretation of the Eisenhower record while ignoring all of its highpoints. Wicker whines that Ike is not strong enough on civil rights, he unleashed the CIA, he began the long descent into Vietnam, he did not challenge McCarthy, he did not sign a nuclear test ban treaty. Blah blah blah. In short, he was a doddering old man who was shallow in comparison with the Kennedys and largely a caretaker president. While Wicker takes occasional swipes at being objective, his criticisms of Eisenhower do not take into account hindsight nor the large amount of revisionist Eisenhower scholarship. To read this book, one would assume that detente was still possible and that managing the Cold War to stalemate during its hottest years was nothing to write home about. For Wicker, it's 1960 all over again, and JFK will ride to the rescue. There are some good observations of Eisenhower in person that are worth buying the book for, the sort of touches that one would expect from a journalist who had actually met the man. But Wicker also drags in that "His preferred reading was western novels" and that "His painting was strictly a hobby, with no concern for art. He objected to a Picasso hanging in Gabriel Hauge's White House Office, disliked classical music.." and other mortal sins. This sort of thing stands out because it reads like a typical argument against Eisenwhower in 1956: "Well,you know, Stevenson is so much more eloquent."
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it for an Eisenhower fan!!!
Review: Tom Wicker presents a portrait of Eisenhower that is as negatively biased as Paul Johnson's treatment of Napoleon, which also appears in this series of brief biographies. If you happen to dislike Ike as much as Wicker does, then you might derive some sadistic satisfaction from reading this little book. However, if you prefer to read biographies that are fair and balanced, then you should steer well clear. Wicker damns Eisenhower not for what he did, but for what he failed to accomplish, e.g. end the Cold War and bring about racial harmony. He ignores the peace and unprecedented prosperity that marked the Eisenhower Administrations. He appears unaware of declassified Soviet documents that credit Eisenhower with averting nuclear war (on several occasions). He attempts weakly to blame Eisenhower for the Vietnam War, and to absolve JFK of any complicity. Wicker manages to interpret ordering the 101st Airborne Division to enforce de-segregation as "doing next to nothing" to support Civil Rights. Wicker's silly elitism is his most annoying trait: Ike was a bad President because he enjoyed Western novels and golf; and, because he didn't like Picasso. Years ago, Wicker wrote a biography of Nixon, called ONE OF US. His thesis was that Nixon was destroyed by a self-loathing American middle class who recognized him as one of their own. Because Nixon was not a patrician, the American people determined that he was not fit to rule them. If you buy that claptrap, you might like this book. Mr. Wicker is certainly fortunate that Stephen Ambrose is no longer alive. Mr. Ambrose, who wrote the definitive biography of Eisenhower, would have flayed Wicker publicly for this careless and mean-spirited drivel. Readers would do well to pass this book over and instead read Ambrose's abridged one-volume life of Eisenhower. Ambrose's thesis is that Eisenhower was "a great and good man" (and one of America's finest Presidents) and he provides abundant evidence to support that claim.
Rating:
Summary: Another biographer who detests his subject.
Review: Tom Wicker presents a portrait of Eisenhower that is as unfair and inaccurate as Paul Johnson's treatment of Napoleon, which also appears in this series of brief biographies. If you happen to dislike Ike as much as Wicker does, then you might derive some sadistic satisfaction from reading this partisan screed. If you prefer to read biographies that are fair and balanced, then you should steer well clear of this bitter little tome. Wicker damns Eisenhower not for what he did, but for what he failed to accomplish, e.g. end the Cold War and bring about racial harmony. He ignores the peace and unprecedented and widespread prosperity that marked the Eisenhower Administrations. He appears unaware of recently declassified Soviet documents that credit Eisenhower with averting nuclear war (on several occasions). He attempts weakly to blame Eisenhower for the Vietnam War, and to absolve JFK of any complicity. He manages to interpret ordering the 101st Airborne Division to enforce de-segregation as "doing next to nothing" to support Civil Rights. Wicker has nothing but contempt for Eisenhower, and his prejudice is plain and wearisome. Wicker is a snob and he indulges in silly elitism: Ike was a bad President because he enjoyed Western novels and golf; and, because he didn't like Picasso. Years ago, Wicker wrote a biography of Nixon, called ONE OF US. His thesis was that Nixon was destroyed by a self-loathing American middle class who recognized him as one of their own. Because Nixon was not a patrician, he was not fit to rule. If you buy that claptrap, you might like this book. Mr. Wicker is certainly fortunate that Stephen Ambrose is no longer alive. Mr. Ambrose, who wrote the definitive biography of Eisenhower, would have flayed Wicker publicly for this careless and mean-spirited drivel. Readers would do well to pass this book over and instead read Ambrose's abridged one-volume life of Eisenhower. Ambrose's thesis is that Eisenhower was "a great and good man" (and one of America's finest Presidents) and he provides abundant evidence to support that claim.
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