Eisenhower by Jim Newton

Eisenhower by Jim Newton

Newly discovered and declassified documents make for a surprising and revealing portrait of the president we thought we knew.

America's thirty-fourth president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter-in-chief. This new look reveals how wrong they were. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb and refused to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, McCarthywasm. He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession, built an interstate highway system, turned an $8 billion deficit in 1953 into a $500 million surplus in 1960. (Ike was the last President until Bill Clinton to leave his country in the black.)

The President Eisenhower of popular imagination is a benign figure, armed with a putter, a winning smile, and little else. The Eisenhower of veteran journalist Jim Newton's rendering is shrewd, sentimental, and tempestuous. He mourned the death of his first son and doted on his grandchildren but could, one aide recalled, peel the varnish off a desk with his temper. Mocked as shallow and inarticulate, he was in fact a meticulous manager. Admired as a general, he was a champion of peace. In Korea and Vietnam, in Quemoy and Berlin, his generals urged him to wage nuclear war. Time and again he considered the idea and rejected it. And it was Eisenhower who appointed the liberal justices Earl Warren and William Brennan and who then called in the military to enforce desegregation in the schools.

Rare interviews, newly discovered records, and fresh insights undergird this gripping and timely narrative.

Jim Newton spent twenty-five years at the Los Angeles Times as a reporter, editor, bureau chief, columnist, editor-at-large and editor of the editorial pages. He was part of the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and the earthquake of 1994, both of which were awarded Pulitzer Prizes to the staff. Newton, who now teaches at UCLA and founded the university's Blueprint magazine, is also the author of two critically acclaimed, bestselling biographies, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, and Eisenhower: The White House Years and collaborated with Leon Panetta on his New York Times bestselling autobiography Worthy Fights.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780767928137
ISBN 10	076792813X
Title	Eisenhower
Author	Jim Newton
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2012-10-02
Number of pages	480
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable