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WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO AMERICAN HISTORY

This series provides essential and authoritative overviews of the scholarship that has shaped our present understanding of the American past. Edited by eminent historians, each volume tackles one of the major periods or themes of American history, with individual topics authored by key scholars who have spent considerable time in research on the questions and controversies that have sparked debate in their field of interest. The volumes are accessible for the non‐specialist, while also engaging scholars seeking a reference to the historiography or future concerns.

PUBLISHED

A Companion to Post‐1945 America
Edited by Jean‐Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig

A Companion to 19th‐Century America
Edited by William L. Barney

A Companion to the American South
Edited by John B. Boles

A Companion to American Military History
Edited by James Bradford

A Companion to American Indian History
Edited by Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury

A Companion to the American West
Edited by William Deverell

A Companion to Los Angeles
Edited by William Deverell and Greg Hise

A Companion to California History
Edited by William Deverell and David Igler

A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction
Edited by Lacy K. Ford

A Companion to the American Revolution
Edited by Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole

A Companion to American Legal History
Edited by Sally E. Hadden and Alfred L. Brophy

A Companion to American Cultural History
Edited by Karen Halttunen

A Companion to American Women’s History
Edited by Nancy A. Hewitt

A Companion to African‐American History
Edited by Alton Hornsby, Jr.

A Companion to the Meuse‐Argonne Campaign
Edited by Edward G. Lengel

A Companion to Custer and the Little Big Horn Campaign
Edited by Brad D. Lookingbill

A Companion to the History of American Science
Edited by Georgina M. Montgomery and Mark A. Largent

A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Edited by Christopher M. Nichols and Nancy C. Unger

A Companion to American Technology
Edited by Carroll Pursell

A Companion to American Sport History
Edited by Steven A. Riess

A Companion to American Environmental History
Edited by Douglas Cazaux Sackman

A Companion to American Foreign Relations
Edited by Robert Schulzinger

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War
Edited by Aaron Sheehan‐Dean

A Companion to American Immigration
Edited by Reed Ueda

A Companion to Colonial America
Edited by Daniel Vickers

A Companion to Benjamin Franklin
Edited by David Waldstreicher

A Companion to 20th‐Century America
Edited by Stephen J. Whitfield

A Companion to the Vietnam War
Edited by Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco

PRESIDENTIAL COMPANIONS

PUBLISHED

A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson
Edited by Sean Patrick Adams

A Companion to Thomas Jefferson
Edited by Francis D. Cogliano

A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents, 1865‐1881
Edited by Edward O. Frantz

A Companion to Ronald Reagan
Edited by Andrew L. Johns

A Companion to Gerald R. Ford & Jimmy Carter
Edited by Scott Kaufman

A Companion to Woodrow Wilson
Edited by Ross A. Kennedy

A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe
Edited by Stuart Leibiger

A Companion to George Washington
Edited by Edward G. Lengel

A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson
Edited by Mitchell B. Lerner

A Companion to Harry S. Truman
Edited by Daniel S. Margolies

A Companion to Dwight D. Eisenhower
Edited by Chester J. Pach

A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt
Edited by William D. Pederson

A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt
Edited by Serge Ricard

A Companion to John F. Kennedy
Edited by Marc J. Selverstone

A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover
Edited by Katherine A. S. Sibley

A Companion to First Ladies
Edited by Katherine A. S. Sibley

A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents, 1837‐1861
Edited by Joel Silbey

A Companion to Richard M. Nixon
Edited by Melvin Small

A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams
Edited by David Waldstreicher

A Companion To Dwight D. Eisenhower

Edited by

Chester J. Pach

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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For Gregory and Lauren

Notes on Contributors

Thomas Bruscino is Associate Professor of History at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies. He is the author of A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along (2010), and his writings have appeared in the Claremont Review of Books, Army History, The New Criterion, Military Review, The Journal of Military History, White House Studies, War & Society, War in History, The Journal of America's Military Past, Doublethink, Reviews in American History, Joint Force Quarterly, and Parameters.

James Callanan teaches at Durham University, UK, and is a specialist in Cold War and modern American history. He has done extensive research into the workings of the US intelligence community and is the author of Covert Action in the Cold War: US Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations (2010).

Richard V. Damms is Associate Professor of History at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Scientists and Statesmen: Eisenhower’s Science Advisers and National Security Policy (2015) and The Eisenhower Presidency, 1953–1961 (2002), and co‐editor of Culture, Power and Security: New Directions in the History of National and International Security (2012).

Robert T. Davis II is Associate Professor of History at the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is the author of The Challenge of Adaptation: The US Army in the Aftermath of Conflict, 1953–2000 (2008) and The US Army and the Media in the 20th Century (2009), and the editor of U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security: Chronology and Index for the 20th Century, 2 vols. (2010).

Andrew J. Falk is Associate Professor of History at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, where he specializes in the history of American foreign relations, politics, and culture. He is the author of Upstaging the Cold War: American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940–1960 (2010), which earned Honorable Mention for the Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His current book project, Shadow Diplomats, examines how American NGOs and private citizens served as proxies for the US government to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced persons during the era of the world wars of the twentieth century.

J. Brooks Flippen is Professor of History at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Nixon and the Environment (2000), Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism (2006), and Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right (2011).

Kevin E. Grimm is Assistant Professor of History at Regent University in Virginia Beach. He studies the many relationships between African Americans, US policymakers, international labor unions, and African nations, especially Ghana, in the 1950s and 1960s. His work has appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History and OFO: Journal of Transatlantic Studies. He has also written several book chapters, including one on the legislative and social impact of film documentaries analyzing the murder of Emmett Till. He is the author of America Enters the Cold War: The Road to Global Commitment, 1945–1950 (forthcoming).

Peter L. Hahn is Professor of History and Divisional Dean, Arts and Humanities, at The Ohio State University He served as executive director of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations from 2003 to 2015. He is the author of five books on the history of American foreign relations in the Middle East, most recently Missions Accomplished? The United States and Iraq since World War I (2012).

Michael F. Hopkins is director of the MA in twentieth‐century history program at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Oliver Franks and the Truman Administration (2003), The Cold War (2011), and Dean Acheson and the Obligations of Power (2017). He is the co‐editor of Cold War Britain (2003) and The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939–1977 (2009).

Andrew M. Johnston is an Associate Professor of History at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is a former associate director of Carleton’s Research Centre in American Studies, and a former director of the Centre for American Studies at Western University in London, Ontario. He took his PhD in international history from Cambridge University under the direction of Ian Clark. He is the author of Hegemony and Culture in the Origins of NATO Nuclear First‐Use (2005) and is currently working on an international history of the “crisis of liberalism” in the North Atlantic world between 1880 and 1920.

Scott Kaufman is chair of the Depatment of History and Board of Trustees Research Scholar at Francis Marion University in South Carolina. He has authored or co‐authored more than a half‐dozen books on US diplomatic and presidential history, including Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America (2013) and is the editor of A Companion to Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter (2015). He is currently writing a biography of President Ford.

Carolyn Herbst Lewis is Assistant Professor of History at Grinnell College. She is the author of Prescription for Heterosexuality: Sexual Citizenship in the Cold War Era (2010).

James I. Matray is Professor of History at California State University, Chico. A specialist on Korean–American relations, he has written or edited nine books, most recently Crisis in a Divided Korea: A Chronology and Reference Guide (2016). He is also editor in chief of the Journal of American–East Asian Relations.

Iwan Morgan is Professor of US Studies and Commonwealth Fund Professor of American History, University College London. His publications include Eisenhower Versus “The Spenders”: The Eisenhower Administration, the Democrats, and the Budget, 1953–60 (1990), Deficit Government: Taxation and Spending in Modern America (1995), and The Age of Deficits: Presidents and Unbalanced Budgets from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush (2009), winner of the Richard Neustadt Book Prize for 2010. His most recent book is Reagan: American Icon (2016).

Andrew Morris is Associate Professor of History at Union College in Schenectady, New York. His research focuses on twentieth‐century US political and policy history, and in particular the history of the “mixed” welfare state. He is the author of The Limits of Voluntarism: Charity and Welfare from the New Deal through the Great Society (2009) and is currently at work on a book focusing on Hurricane Camille and the politics of disaster relief in the 1960s and 1970s.

Philip Nash is Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, Shenango Campus, where he has won three teaching awards. In 2010 he was Fulbright Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is author of The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963 (1997), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. His current research is on America’s first woman ambassadors, 1933–1964.

David A. Nichols, earned his PhD at William & Mary and is the author of A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (2007) and Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis – Suez and the Brink of War (2011). He is also the author of Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics (2012). His most recent book is Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower’s Secret Campaign against Joseph McCarthy (2017).

Kenneth Osgood is Professor of History and Director of the McBride Honors Program at Colorado School of Mines. He is the author of Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (2006), and co‐editor of The United States and Public Diplomacy: New Directions in Cultural and International History (2010); Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century (2010); The Cold War after Stalin’s Death: A Missed Opportunity for Peace? (2006); and Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, the Conservative Movement, and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama (2014).

Chester J. Pach teaches history at Ohio University, where he has won the Jeanette G. Grasselli Brown Faculty Teaching Award in the Humanities (2016). He is the author or editor of four books, including The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (revised edition, 1991). He has written numerous book chapters and articles, and is completing a book on the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Stephen T. Pfeffer completed his PhD at Ohio University in December 2012. His dissertation is entitled “Hostile Takeover: The New Right Insurgent Movement, Ronald Reagan, and the Republican Party, 1977–1984.” This work explores the contentious relationship between the New Right and the Reagan administration. He is currently an adjunct professor at Columbus State Community College in Columbus, Ohio.

Stephen G. Rabe is a Professor of History and holds an Ashbel Smith Chair at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has written or edited 11 books, including John F. Kennedy: World Leader (2010) and The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America (2nd edition, 2016). His Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (1988) won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Rabe has taught or lectured in 20 countries, conducting seminars on modern US history in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. He has also served as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College Dublin in Ireland and the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Gary W. Reichard is the author of The Reaffirmation of Republicanism: Dwight Eisenhower and the Eighty‐third Congress (1975), Politics as Usual: The Age of Truman and Eisenhower (1988, 2002), and Deadlock and Disillusionment: American Politics since 1968 (2016). He has taught recent American history at The Ohio State University, the University of Delaware, the University of Maryland College Park, Florida Atlantic University, and California State University, Long Beach. He is currently Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Nicholas Evan Sarantakes is Associate Professor of Strategy at the US Naval War College. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Southern California. His main research interests are the World War II and Cold War periods. He is the author of five books, including Keystone: The American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.–Japanese Relations (2000), Allies Against the Rising Sun: The United States, the British Nations, and the Defeat of Imperial Japan (2009), and Making Patton: A Classic War Film’s Epic Journey to the Silver Screen (2012). He has won five writing awards for his articles and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has previously taught at Texas A&M University–Commerce, the Air War College, the University of Southern Mississippi, and the US Army Command and General Staff College. He is currently writing a book on the homefront in World War II, and another on the Battle of Manila.

Amy L. Scott is Associate Professor of History and Director of Women’s Studies at Bradley University. She is the co‐editor, with Kathleen Brosnan, of City Dreams, Country Schemes: Community and Identity in the American West (2011). She has authored several essays on post‐1945 US urban history and social movements, and co‐edits the Urban West series for the University of Nevada Press with Eugene Moehring. She is currently revising her first monograph, City Republic of Boulder: Lifestyle Liberalism and the Politics of the Good Life, and is working on a second book, about the history of urban agriculture.

David L. Snead is Professor of History at Liberty University. He is the author of Eisenhower, the Gaither Committee, and the Cold War (1999), An American Soldier in World War I (2006), and John F. Kennedy: The New Frontier President (2010). He is the editor of In Hostiles Skies: A B‐24 Pilot in World War II (2006) and Escape from Bataan (2016).

Kathryn C. Statler is Professor of History at the University of San Diego. She is the author of Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (2007) and co‐editor of The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (2006).

Steven Wagner is Professor of History and former head of the Social Science Department at Missouri Southern State University. He teaches a variety of courses in twentieth‐century United States history, and in 2012 was honored as Missouri Southern’s “Outstanding Teacher” by the Missouri Southern Foundation. He is the author of Eisenhower Republicanism: Pursuing the Middle Way (2006). He received his PhD from Purdue University in 1999.

Jonathan Reed Winkler is Associate Professor of History at Wright State University. A specialist in US foreign relations, military and naval history, he is the author of Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I (2008).

Introduction: Eisenhower, Yesterday and Today

Chester J. Pach

In his farewell address to the American people, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered what many observers at the time and in the decades since have considered his most eloquent speech as president. Speaking from the Oval Office of the White House on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower refrained from enumerating his accomplishments in office other than to point to his administration’s productive cooperation with Congress, both houses of which had been under the control of the opposition party—the Democrats—since 1955. Instead, Eisenhower peered into “society’s future” from the vantage point of a cold war that “commands our whole attention” and “absorbs our very beings.” Because of the enormous demands of protecting US security against an attack that could occur with only a few minutes’ warning, there had emerged “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” that were “new in the American experience.” The outgoing president then issued a warning that quickly became his most famous presidential legacy. “In the councils of government,” Eisenhower declared, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military‐industrial complex.” The president added that a “technological revolution” had changed research, making it “more formalized, complex, and costly,” enlarging the role of the federal government in directing and subsidizing the work in university laboratories, and creating the danger that the lure of a government contract could eclipse the importance of intellectual curiosity. Finally, Eisenhower cautioned his fellow citizens against policies that plundered “for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow….We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow” (Eisenhower, 1961).

Eisenhower’s farewell address received praise, but some of the plaudits were little more than backhanded compliments. The Washington Post, for example, concluded that the president’s valedictory speech would increase the public “affection” that Eisenhower already enjoyed, even if it included “little that was new” (“Ike’s Farewell,” 1961). The Nation was more caustic in its appraisal, editorializing that “nothing became Mr. Eisenhower’s career in office like the leaving of it….For eight years, Mr. Eisenhower has depressed his fellow Americans by a seeming inability to grasp the major problems of his era; but now in the closing days of his Administration he spoke like the statesman and democratic leader we had so long hungered for him to become” (Pach and Richardson, 1991: 230). European commentators also offered tepid assessments. For example, the French newspaper Le Monde declared that Eisenhower’s farewell address was “without originality” (“European Press Decries Ike Record,” 1961).

With the passage of time, however, Eisenhower looked less like a befuddled or belated statesman and more like a prophet who foresaw vital and enduring issues of contemporary US public policy. Writing 50 years after the president’s speech, historian Andrew J. Bacevich praised Eisenhower for “transcend[ing] circumstance and bear[ing] witness to some lasting truth.” Long and difficult wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan had persuaded Bacevich that the military‐industrial complex was “stubbornly resistant to change,” the expenses of war had swollen federal deficits while contributing to “acute economic distress,” and American democracy had suffered (Bacevich, 2011). Other analysts writing a half‐century after the farewell address emphasized that Eisenhower was right about the temptation of paying for today’s expenses with tomorrow’s resources. Journalist Rupert Cornwell, for example, maintained that the “‘credit card’ wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose costs will burden American taxpayers for years to come,” showed that “the old general knew whereof he spoke” (Cornwell, 2011).

The shifting reaction to Eisenhower’s farewell address mirrors the changing assessments of his presidency over more than six decades. Eisenhower was popular with the American people throughout his eight years in office from 1953 to 1961. His approval rating in the Gallup Poll never dipped below 52 percent and averaged a robust 65 percent. Many political commentators and early historians of his presidency, however, were less impressed. Marquis Childs, a respected correspondent for the St. Louis Post‐Dispatch, published Eisenhower: Captive Hero in 1958, in which he dismissed the president as a weak and often ineffective leader. An enthused electorate in 1952 invested their hopes in the heroic general of World War II, while ignoring, according to Childs, that Eisenhower’s stature “had little or nothing to do with politics and government.” The result of having “so little preparation for what is surely the most difficult and demanding position in the world today” was that Eisenhower provided fumbling or indifferent leadership in meeting Cold War challenges like the Soviet launching of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, or in resolving critical domestic issues, such as the desegregation of public schools in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education (Childs, 1958: 292).

Cruder contemporary critiques reduced Eisenhower to a caricature—a general who delegated essential tasks to his staff while devoting much of his time to golfing vacations or bridge games with a circle of rich friends known as “the gang.” According to this view, Eisenhower was in charge but not in control of his own administration. His heroic reputation and genial smile inspired popular respect and admiration, even if his baffling answers to questions at news conferences suggested a tenuous grasp of important issues. Eisenhower even joked about his tendency to talk in circles that sometimes made reporters scratch their heads. When Press Secretary James C. Hagerty cautioned him about a sensitive issue prior to a news conference, Eisenhower replied, “Don’t worry, Jim, if that question comes up, I’ll just confuse them” (Ambrose, 1990: 384). When the president suffered serious illnesses—a heart attack in 1955, a stroke in 1957—humorists joked about Eisenhower’s supposed dependence on his subordinates to run his administration. It would be awful, they asserted, if Eisenhower died and Vice President Richard M. Nixon succeeded him. But it would be even worse if White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams died and Eisenhower became president (Thomas, 2012: 400). In short, the American people may have “liked Ike,” but mainly because of who he was rather than what he did while in the White House.

Most scholars considered Eisenhower at best an average chief executive soon after he left office, but his reputation began to improve in the following decade. A poll of 75 US historians in 1962 ranked Eisenhower as mediocre in his White House achievements, just above Andrew Johnson, who barely survived impeachment, and behind such lackluster presidents as Benjamin Harrison and Chester A. Arthur (“Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians,” 1962). By the end of the decade, however, what historian Mary McAuliffe describes as the “revulsion against the turmoil of the 1960s and the Vietnam War, reinforced by nostalgia for an apparently simpler and happier era” produced reevaluations of Eisenhower’s presidency (McAuliffe, 1981: 626). The strong economic growth of the Eisenhower years and the absence of US involvement in a major shooting war after the armistice in Korea in 1953 no longer seemed like happy coincidences, but the result, in large measure, of Eisenhower’s calculating and resolute leadership. In an important 1967 article, commentator Murray Kempton complained about the “underestimation” of Eisenhower as a weak president. “He was the great tortoise upon whose back the world sat for eight years,” Kempton asserted. “We laughed at him…and all the while we never knew the cunning beneath the shell” (Kempton, 1967: 156). By the early 1970s, biographers such as Herbert Parmet had documents from the Eisenhower Library to sustain a revisionist interpretation of the thirty‐fourth president as a leader with “a remarkable political instinct” who achieved substantial success in both domestic and international affairs (Parmet, 1972: 577).

Eisenhower revisionism reached high tide at the beginning of the 1980s. Extremely influential was Fred I. Greenstein’s The Hidden‐Hand Presidency, which sought to explain Eisenhower’s “unique record in winning and holding public support” at a time when increasing executive powers and rising popular expectations carried with them risks of “making enemies and disappointing followers.” Central to Greenstein’s interpretation was Eisenhower’s canny ability to hide his role in day‐to‐day policymaking in order to preserve freedom of maneuver and divert criticism of controversial policies away from the Oval Office. This hidden‐hand leadership enabled Eisenhower to appear to be above politics and thus preserve his remarkable popularity during his eight years in office. Simultaneously, however, hidden‐hand leadership prevented contemporaries from appreciating that Eisenhower was an activist president (Greenstein, 1982: 4). Stephen E. Ambrose, too, found success in Eisenhower’s presidency that a previous generation of scholars had failed to discern. At the end of his magisterial two‐volume biography, Ambrose declared, “Eisenhower gave the nation eight years of peace and prosperity. No other President in the twentieth century could make that claim. No wonder that millions of Americans felt that the country was damned lucky to have him” (Ambrose, 1984: 627). By the early 1980s, many scholars of the presidency shared Greenstein’s and Ambrose’s conclusions. A poll of 49 experts on the presidency in the Chicago Tribune in January 1982 ranked Eisenhower as the ninth most successful chief executive (“Our Best and Worst Presidents,” 1982).

By the early 1990s, new scholarship had begun to challenge some of the fundamental ideas of Eisenhower revisionism. Eisenhower postrevisionism, as I have called this emerging school of thought, accepted the revisionist view that Eisenhower was an activist and thoughtful leader determined to advance prosperity at home and protect US interests abroad. Postrevisionists, however, maintained that revisionists had dwelled too much on the processes of policymaking—especially the president’s newly discovered activist role—while neglecting the results of the Eisenhower administration’s decisions or actions. As I wrote, revisionists often “mistook Eisenhower’s cognizance of policies for brilliance and his avoidance of war for the promotion of peace” (Pach and Richardson, 1991: xiii).

During the past generation there has been a vigorous debate about the results of the Eisenhower administration’s actions—or, in some case, inaction—in shaping public policy, and this volume reflects the vigor and diversity of that scholarship. The authors of the essays that follow interpret Eisenhower from different and, often, conflicting perspectives, and they seek to understand his impact, as appropriate, in broader domestic and international contexts. The emphasis in this volume is on the presidency. It would be impossible, however, to evaluate Eisenhower’s White House years without analyzing his career in the US Army. Accordingly, this volume is divided into three sections. The first, “General of the Army,” examines Eisenhower’s most important personal, professional, and intellectual experiences beginning with his childhood in Abilene, Kansas, and continuing through his education at the US Military Academy at West Point, his command of Allied forces in Europe during World War II, his service as Chief of Staff of the US Army, and his role as the first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) armed forces. The next section, on Eisenhower as “President,” probes the many dimensions of Eisenhower’s White House policies as well as the culture and society of “Ike’s America” in the 1950s. These essays address fundamental issues, such as the Eisenhower administration’s involvement in civil rights, managing the economy, and protecting the environment. The Cold War was Eisenhower’s central concern, and the essays in this volume discuss Eisenhower’s shaping of national strategy, his use of covert action and public diplomacy, and his reliance on nuclear weapons as instruments of deterrence and diplomacy. In addition, individual essays probe US relations during the Eisenhower presidency with Western Europe, Great Britain, Latin America, China, Vietnam, the Middle East, and the Third World. A final section, on Eisenhower as “Citizen,” assesses the former president’s influence on public policy during the 1960s and his legacies for the Republican Party.

“My place in history,” Eisenhower declared during his last year in the White House, “will be decided by historians….And I don’t think I will be around to differ with them” (Pach and Richardson, 1991: 237). Eisenhower surely would have disputed the conclusions of historians who lament his reluctance to provide stronger moral leadership on civil rights or who deplore his excessive and unwise reliance on covert action to overthrow unfriendly or hostile foreign governments. He also would have applauded those scholars who believe that he shaped a national strategy that led to US success in the Cold War or that he played an important role in expanding and strengthening vital social welfare programs, such as Social Security. On many issues, international and domestic, of the Eisenhower presidency, however, there is no consensus. Historians continue to debate, while decisions remain contested. The essays in this volume analyze the rich historiography of the Eisenhower years, provide thoughtful and sometimes provocative assessments, and encourage readers to think about the connections between past and present. As his farewell address indicates, Eisenhower was concerned about the vitality of democracy in his own lifetime and in future generations. We can all learn from the challenges he faced, the successes he achieved, and the dilemmas he encountered about how to deal with similar issues in our own lives and in America today.

References

  1. Ambrose, S. E. (1984). Eisenhower, vol. 2: The President. Simon & Schuster.
  2. Ambrose, S. E. (1990). Eisenhower: Soldier and President. Simon & Schuster.
  3. Bacevich, A. (2011). “The Tyranny of Defense Inc.,” Atlantic (January/February), http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the‐tyranny‐of‐defense‐inc/308342/(accessed March 2, 2016).
  4. Childs, M. (1958). Eisenhower: Captive Hero. A Critical Study of the General and the President. Harcourt, Brace.
  5. Cornwell, R. (2011). “Ike Was Right All Along: The Danger of the Military‐Industrial Complex,” Independent (January 16), http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ike‐was‐right‐all‐along‐the‐danger‐of‐the‐military‐industrial‐complex‐2186133.html (accessed March 2, 2016).
  6. Eisenhower, D. (1961). “Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People.” Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, (January 17), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12086 (accessed March 2, 2016).
  7. “European Press Decries Ike Record” (1961). Washington Post (January 19), http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu/docview/141412360/FE8F547F3C9D4D8CPQ/4?accountid=12954 (accessed March 2, 2016).
  8. Greenstein, F. I. (1982). The Hidden‐Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. Basic Books.
  9. “Ike’s Farewell” (1961). Washington Post (January 19).
  10. Kempton, M. (1967). “The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Esquire 68: 108–109.
  11. McAuliffe, M. S. (1981). “Eisenhower, the President,” Journal of American History 68: 625–632.
  12. “Our Best and Worst Presidents” (1982). Chicago Tribune (January 10), http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu/docview/172558552/9FCEE8FDDFD3457BPQ/5?accountid=12954 (accessed March 2, 2016).
  13. “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians” (1962). New York Times (July 29), http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu/docview/115607670/D99527A400B54609PQ/2?accountid=12954 (accessed March 2, 2016).
  14. Pach, C. J., Jr., and E. Richardson. (1991). The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (rev. ed.). University Press of Kansas.
  15. Parmet, H. S. (1972). Eisenhower and the American Crusades. Macmillan.
  16. Thomas, E. (2012). Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World. Little, Brown.

Part I
General of the Army