 It's
no surprise that the biographer of Douglas MacArthur and Ulysses S. Grant clearly conveys
the military talents that enabled Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) to ensure the Allies'
victory in World War II, but Geoffrey Perret is equally perceptive when dealing with the
personality behind the famously genial grin. Perhaps marked by his father's coldness and
grim religious zeal (though his mother was a lively, cheerful woman), Eisenhowernever
expressed his feelings easily, even to his cherished wife, Mamie. His intelligence and
scholarly gifts got the poor boy from Kansas into West Point; his administrative and
training abilities made him too valuable at home to be employed for active duty in World
War I, much to his chagrin. Professional fulfillment and fame as the general who won WWII
couldn't change the self-controlled habits of a military lifetime, and Perret depicts
Eisenhoweras reluctantly drawn into politics by a sense of duty. Covering his presidency,
Perret doesn't let him off the hook about such touchy matters as U.S. involvement in the
1954 overthrow of Guatemala's elected government or the biased hearing that lifted
physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance. But the author obviously likes Ike,
and he helps his readers understand why most Americans in the 1940s and '50s did too. --Wendy
Smith |