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Zusatztext “The definitive single-volume account of this understudied but highly consequential presidency.” Informationen zum Autor William I. Hitchcock is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and the Randolph Compton Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs. A graduate of Kenyon College and Yale University, he is the author of The Age of Eisenhower and The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe , which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Klappentext "[This book] is the definitive account of [Eisenhower's] presidency, drawing extensively on declassified material... that explains why this "do-nothing" president is... regarded as one of the best leaders our country has ever had"--Amazon.com. Leseprobe The Age of Eisenhower PROLOGUE “When I think about Dwight Eisenhower,” wrote Capt. Edward Beach Jr., Eisenhower’s naval aide, “I like to recall an incident that took place aboard the presidential yacht Williamsburg shortly after he was inaugurated for his first term in 1953.” The Williamsburg, a steel-hulled vessel of 1,800 tons, had served as President Harry S. Truman’s pleasure craft; he used it for cruises with friends and political cronies. In May 1953 President Eisenhower ordered it decommissioned. He thought the ship frivolous and wasteful and felt it should be used for recreation by GIs who had been injured in the Korean War. One evening the president met the ship at the dock in the Washington Navy Yard as it returned from a cruise on the Potomac. “As Eisenhower boarded the Williamsburg, he stepped in among the soldiers, brushing aside his Secret Service guards with words to the effect, ‘Just let me be for a while. I know these men.’?” Captain Beach remembered the scene: The soldiers crowded in around him. They were young men whose bodies had been ravaged by war in some way; some lacked an arm or a leg, some hobbled on crutches, others had heartbreaking facial disfigurements. . . . They gathered as close to the President as they could get, and I heard him talking to them. This was an Eisenhower that the public never saw. He talked to the soldiers of love of country, and of sacrifice. He said their country would never let them down, but no matter how much it did for them it was nothing compared to what they had done for it. And then he said that even with all they had already given, they must yet be prepared to give more, for they were symbols of devotion and sacrifice and they could never escape that role and its responsibilities. Beach never forgot the electricity of Eisenhower’s presence and the impact it had on these wounded warriors. “His voice had a deep friendly warmth, with a somewhat different timbre than I had ever heard before. It reached out and grabbed the men around him, so that they kept crowding in closer and closer as he talked, as if an unseen magnet were pulling at them.” 1 Historians who study Eisenhower know how those men felt in his presence. Ike draws you in. He radiated authenticity, idealism, sincerity, and charisma, and these personal qualities were the keys to his political success. Between 1945 and 1961 no person dominated American public life more than Eisenhower. He was the most well-liked and admired man in America in these years. And he was also the most consequential. This book argues that the era from the end of the Second World War up to the presidency of John F. Kennedy deserves to be known as the Age of Eisenhower. • • • Such a claim would once have prompted chuckles and even sneers from historians, journalists, and politicians. From the start ...
