Eisenhower's resignation letter prepared before D Day - ref conversation Dan Thanksgiving 2022 ( )

Eisenhower, Volume #1 by Stephen Ambrose is a big book, 572 pages of text and then 50 or so pages of notes and index. The test is dense there are a lot of words on each page. A well done work by an author that I have read before. This work was done in 1983. Ambrose died in 2002.

Volume 1 goes from Eisenhower's birth in 1890 to his election as President in 1952. Most of the bulk of the book covers his military career.

I found one objectionable comment in the book. In the section regarding the 1952 election campaign Richard Nixon presented some problems for Eisenhower. The two men didn't really like each other. Ambrose stated that Nixon was a problematic running mate but not a crook. Nixon was a crook. Perhaps Ambrose should have read The Arrogance of Power by Anthony Summers. Ones reviewer of Summers book said "Anthony Summers' biography of Richard Nixon reveals a troubled figure whose criminal behavior did not begin with Watergate. "

Other than that I enjoyed the book. I won't take on Volume 2 for awhile. It was a big job to read.
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I've read Crusade in Europe (by Eisenhower about his time there) and both of Omar Bradley's autobiographies. Read a couple books on Patton and MacArthur and a minor host of them on Churchill and Roosevelt. So I have some background on the person and events covered in this biography.

I most enjoyed reading about his early years in the Army before WWII. WWII was exhausting and exhilarating for Eisenhower and sometimes just exhausting for the reader.

It really is about who you know sometimes. We see this illustrated for Eisenhower getting opportunities to serve. But, make no mistake, opportunities may have come from knowing people but Eisenhower never would have been anybody if he wasn't ready to work very hard to do and be his best.

I had not read about Ike's political campaign or how he approached the possibility of becoming president and enjoyed reading about that.


I'd like to think this is one of the better biographies on Eisenhower. However, I know in the past few years several have been published and it seems a new appreciation for Eisenhower has arisen. ( )

The book is well constructed, absorbing but ultimately too hagiographic to be the last word on Eisenhower. The author aptly retells the first 62 years of his life, not overly abridging or over-telling, allowing the audience to get a sense of the man. Giving the reader a constant need to keep reading in the search of even more interesting and/or humorous information.
The author is ultimately too reverent for my taste. Biographers, must by definition, love their subjects. Lascivious biographies not-with standing; most biographers are struggling to spread to enlighten the world on the magnificence of their subject. With presidential biographers this is doubly a problem. (Of course some biographers hate their subject, this book is not of that strain.)
The author never lies, but he does abridge Ike's negative aspects and indulge on his positive ones. (E.g. Eisenhower decides not to, after the Normandy invasion, go to Upper Normandy at once, later pushing supply lines to their limits. Mr. Ambrose, the author, rather focuses on his bumbling of Antwerp, which seems just as harsh however the difference between Eisenhower's expediency in the north of France, Antwerp is that Eisenhower curses himself for the later. That is Ambrose illuminates Eisenhower's self-criticism (which had been done previously) through this mistake- laying off the fact that he could have solved the problem before it occurred by sending one of his better generals to push the Germans back into Belgium opening more ports/guaranteeing more supply lines.)

Not a bad biography by any means, but when it is read make sure you understand you are reading a disciple, an intelligent one, but a disciple nonetheless. ( )

2088 Eisenhower Volume One: Soldier General of the Army President-Elect 1890-1952, by Stephen E. Ambrose (read 29 Jun 1987) This covers Eisenhower's life till he was elected president, and I found the account absorbing. ( )