Eisenhower in War and Peace

John Lewis GaddisEisenhower's greatest accomplishment may well have been to make his presidency look bland and boring: in this sense, he was very different from the flamboyant Roosevelt, and that's why historians at first underestimated him. Jean Edward Smith is among the many who no longer do. The greatest virtue of his biography is to show how well Eisenhower's military training prepared him for this task: like Grant, he made what he did seem easy. It never was, though, and Smith stresses the toll it took on Eisenhower's health, on his marriage and ultimately in the loneliness he could never escape.
—The New York Times Book Review




Publishers WeeklyExcept for FDR, Eisenhower was the 20th century's "most successful president," says Smith.