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Summary
Summary
An account of the military career of Dwight D. Eisenhower, as presented by his son, describes his relationships with such contemporaries as Patton, MacArthur, and Churchill and recounts his campaigns in Africa and Europe.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This thoroughly worthwhile memoir recalls the author's father in his association with various distinguished soldiers and statesmen of the past century. The roster begins with Fox Conner (a pre-WWII general and Ike's mentor), John J. Pershing (the AEF commander in WW I) and George Patton (when both he and Ike were officers in the Tank Corps of 1919). The final trio is Charles de Gaulle, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Winston Churchill. In the author's view, De Gaulle's French patriotism brought out the best and the worst in him, in dealing both with Ike and with his fellow countrymen. Monty never understood Ike, asked the impossible and grumbled when he didn't get it. And Churchill (at whose funeral Ike represented the U.S.) is inscrutably sui generis in the author's eyes as in those of so many others. In between are sketches of MacArthur, Marshall and Patton (as a subordinate general). Possibly the most moving piece recalls the period of 1940-1941, the last days of the peacetime army, when the younger Eisenhower, now the author of such titles as Yanks and The Bitter Woods, was a cadet at West Point, and his father was dreaming of staying with troops in the coming war. But the author paints no one in rosy hues, not even his father, and his research puts them all in their proper context. (June 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The author, Dwight Eisenhower's only child (an older son died in infancy), was a West Point cadet during World War II who occasionally visited his father during the titanic conflict. Combining his personal vantage point with his insights as a notable military historian in his own right, Eisenhower here discusses a gallery of Ike's famed associates: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, and Winston Churchill. The author met all of them and incorporates his personal observations into the more detached descriptions of their influence on or interaction with his father's rise to command the Allies in Europe. Marshall, for example, was directly responsible for Ike's prominence, but he was a figure of remote rectitude in public and equally enigmatic in person. Most readers will likely zero in on the author's views of the bad boys Ike dealt with, Patton and Monty, and Eisenhower's anecdotes fit the popular impression of a profane Patton and an obstreperous Monty. With such personalities plus the author's perspective on historical disputes, these recollections are sure to find an eager audience. --Gilbert Taylor
Choice Review
This work provides a glimpse into selected components of the military career of Dwight Eisenhower (Ike) as perceived by his son, a respected historian who graduated from West Point. Thus, while the author possesses objective academic and military credentials, the book has, not unexpectedly, a positive, albeit minimal, bias. Eisenhower juxtaposes some significant US military engagements with his accounts of interpersonal relationships between his father and many of the civil-military giants on the WW II European stage. Notably absent are chapters on Commanders-in-Chief Roosevelt and Truman. The author's discussion of interpersonal relationships and how tactics and strategies evolved provides a rich panorama. Eisenhower begins with those who influenced Ike's military development--Generals Connor, Ike's most important mentor; Pershing, a symbol of WW I military glories; Patton, who embarrassed him through a number of actions but performed brilliantly on the battlefield; and MacArthur, under whom Ike served in the Philippines. Some discussions are repetitive as the author provides divergent perspectives of the central characters and the bruising of sizable egos. Ike had the final say but encouraged everyone's input, which resulted in a heavy burden from the arrogant Montgomery and friction with de Gaulle, although Ike listed the latter as one of the five greatest men he had known. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels. J. Stanley emeritus, Towson University
Kirkus Review
An excellent appreciation of Dwight Eisenhower's skills as a military commander, though by a biased observer--the general's son, himself a distinguished officer and historian. Now in his ninth decade, John Eisenhower (Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott, 1997, etc.) had thus far not written at length about his father. Students of military history will be glad that he did, however, for here he offers observations that other, more remote biographers have not ventured or elaborated--in particular, on the matter of Ike's influences as a junior officer. Perhaps surprisingly, given the subsequent movie treatment, one of the strongest of those influences was George S. Patton, who, with Eisenhower, courted official disgrace after WWI by arguing for the supremacy of tank warfare in ground combat. They were right, of course, as WWII bore out; of that future war, Patton effusively predicted, "Ike would be the Robert E. Lee and Patton would be Ike's Stonewall Jackson." That prediction was less accurate, as readers will discover. Elsewhere, Eisenhower considers the curious role that Douglas MacArthur had on Ike's career, then goes on to study closely Ike's record as theater commander for the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944. That close account turns up some criticisms, along with a few surprises, almost all of them having to do with the political aspect of balancing the egos and ambitions of the likes of Bernard Montgomery, Charles de Gaulle, and Josef Stalin, to say nothing of Patton and MacArthur. Eisenhower, for example, remarks that the Battle of the Bulge might have had a more satisfactory resolution had Ike ordered General Omar Bradley "to remove his tactical headquarters from Luxembourg to Namur, where he could control the main battle to blunt the German spearheads." Such comments will be more meaningful to knowledgeable students of WWII tactics than to general readers, but in the main, Eisenhower's account is nontechnical and free of jargon--and carries you along from start to finish. Soon to be bedside reading for West Point cadets and budding generals. We'll hope that Eisenhower follows with an account of his father's presidential years. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Eisenhower, the author of seven books and a retired brigadier general in the Army Reserve, is of course also the son of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower assisted his father during World War II as a staff officer, and his observations of his father at the time form the basis of this book on war and leadership. Each chapter deals with a complicated situation that "General Ike" had to confront. Dwight Eisenhower had the perfect personality to be the commanding general of the Allies-he was a tough decision maker when he had to be but was also a diplomat who could compromise if necessary. Eisenhower's observations give the reader unusual insight into the relationships General Ike developed during the war, with MacArthur, Patton, and Charles De Gaulle just a few of the complicated personalities discussed here. The book is short, but it is not meant to be an in-depth biography on the level of Stephen Ambrose's Eisenhower. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Mark Ellis, Albany State Univ. Lib., GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Author's Note Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, General of the Army, and Thirty-fourth President of the United States, was one of the dynamic and influential men of the twentieth century. As his only son to survive early childhood, I was able to observe him in different circumstances, sometimes official and sometimes intimate. Though I have previously avoided writing a book devoted solely to him, I have, through the years, read enough misleading material, most of it written by people who have no idea of what he was really like, that I finally decided to record my own view of him. Some of my conclusions are based on what I observed, but much stems from what I have learned in the course of my own writings. No matter how biased in his favor my slant may be, it cannot add much to the confusion that already exists. I never called my father "Ike" to his face. It was always "Dad." Still, in this book I'll always refer to him by his popular nickname, partly for convenience and even more because "Ike" was, to all intents and purposes, his real name. That short, pithy epithet that connotes "roughneck" in the Old West was his. It served him well as an icebreaker in the Army. It was even more useful in politics. Eisenhower was the only President out of forty-three as of this writing to be burdened with a last name of four syllables. Can you imagine the public chanting, "We like Eisenhower"? Or even "We like Dwight"? Ike was more than a name; it was his persona. By no stretch of the imagination is this book a comprehensive biography of Ike, nor is it even a history of the battles he fought. Instead, my essays will deal almost exclusively with Ike's relations with his associates, for the simple reason that the facets of his personality appear differently depending on the individual he was dealing with at a given time. Ike was one man when assigning a mission to General George Patton, another when interacting with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and yet another when working with Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Admittedly, the structure I have chosen brings with it certain difficulties. One is the matter of chronology. More serious is the fact that various incidents in the Second World War appear in more than one chapter. To avoid dreary repetition, therefore, I have tried to avoid covering the details of a single incident in more than one place. Some overlap is, unfortunately, inevitable, and some incidents must be at least mentioned more than once in order for each chapter to stand on its own. Ike had two separate careers, the military and the political. In my own mind, there were really two Ikes. The military Ike faded from the picture when he returned to the United States from Frankfurt in November of 1945, ending his occupation duties in Germany. The Ike of the next quarter century was the political Ike, or at least the politico-military Ike. I have chosen to write about the military Ike, even though the consequences of his activities during the Second World War often carried over into his presidency. The main reason I have done so is that I know more about Ike's career as a soldier than I do his career as a civilian. I am also convinced that Ike's military career was far more important to him personally than his political life. Though I believe that he was an excellent President, especially in his role as commander-in-chief, he did not worry much about what his political opponents said about him in that position. When it came to his military judgments, however, he was vociferous in defending the validity of his decisions. As he contemplated his career at the end of his life, nearly all the men he considered "great" came from the war days, not the political era. To me, at least, Ike's place in history will hinge far more on his days in uniform than on his days in the White House. With those limitations in mind I have given a son's view of a great military leader - highly intelligent, strong, forceful, kind, yet as human as the rest of us. (Continues...) Excerpted from General Ike by John Eisenhower Copyright © 2003 by John S.D. Eisenhower Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.