The New York Times–bestselling biography: a “complete and powerful assessment” of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency (Booklist, starred review). Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower tells the story of a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s, from McCarthyism and the Korean War through civil rights turmoil and Cold War conflicts. This is a portrait of a skilled leader who, despite his conservative inclinations, found a middle path through the bitter partisanship of his era. At home, Eisenhower affirmed the central elements of the New Deal, such as Social Security; fought the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy; and advanced the agenda of civil rights for African-Americans. Abroad, he ended the Korean War and avoided a new quagmire in Vietnam. Yet he also charted a significant expansion of America’s missile technology and deployed a vast array of covert operations around the world to confront the challenge of communism. As he left office, he cautioned Americans to remain alert to the dangers of a powerful military-industrial complex that could threaten their liberties. Today, presidential historians rank Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, and William Hitchcock’s “rich narrative” shows us why Ike’s stock has risen so high. He was a gifted leader, a decent man of humble origins who used his powers to advance the welfare of all Americans (The Wall Street Journal).

Fifty years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce a federal court order desegregating the city's Central High School, a leading authority on Eisenhower presents an original and engrossing narrative that places Ike and his civil rights policies in dramatically new light. Historians such as Stephen Ambrose and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., have portrayed Eisenhower as aloof, if not outwardly hostile, to the plight of African-Americans in the 1950s. It is still widely assumed that he opposed the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision mandating the desegregation of public schools, that he deeply regretted appointing Earl Warren as the Court's chief justice because of his role in molding Brown, that he was a bystander in Congress's passage of the civil rights acts of 1957 and 1960, and that he so mishandled the Little Rock crisis that he was forced to dispatch troops to rescue a failed policy. In this sweeping narrative, David A. Nichols demonstrates that these assumptions are wrong. Drawing on archival documents neglected by biographers and scholars, including thousands of pages newly available from the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Nichols takes us inside the Oval Office to look over Ike's shoulder as he worked behind the scenes, prior to Brown, to desegregate the District of Columbia and complete the desegregation of the armed forces. We watch as Eisenhower, assisted by his close collaborator, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., sifted through candidates for federal judgeships and appointed five pro-civil rights justices to the Supreme Court and progressive judges to lower courts. We witness Eisenhower crafting civil rights legislation, deftly building a congressional coalition that passed the first civil rights act in eighty-two years, and maneuvering to avoid a showdown with Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, over desegregation of Little Rock's Central High. Nichols demonstrates that Eisenhower, though he was a product of his time and its backward racial attitudes, was actually more progressive on civil rights in the 1950s than his predecessor, Harry Truman, and his successors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Eisenhower was more a man of deeds than of words and preferred quiet action over grandstanding. His cautious public rhetoric -- especially his legalistic response to Brown -- gave a misleading impression that he was not committed to the cause of civil rights. In fact, Eisenhower's actions laid the legal and political groundwork for the more familiar breakthroughs in civil rights achieved in the 1960s. Fair, judicious, and exhaustively researched, A Matter of Justice is the definitive book on Eisenhower's civil rights policies that every presidential historian and future biographer of Ike will have to contend with.

In this enlightening volume, Brownell--the man Dwight D. Eisenhower said would make an outstanding president--recounts his achievements and trials as the GOP's most successful presidential operative of the 1940s and '50s, and as Attorney General at a crucial time in American history. Political science professor an coauthor, Burke is the author of The Institutional Presidency. 26 photographs.

The epic 1950s battle that would shape the legal future of the civil rights movement is chronicled here for the first time. The bitter feud between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax white Americans in the South into eventually accepting integration, while Warren, author of the Supreme Court’s historic unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, demanded immediate action to dismantle the segregation of the public school system. In Eisenhower vs. Warren, two-time New York Times Notable Book author James F. Simon examines the years of strife between them that led Eisenhower to say that his biggest mistake as president was appointing that “dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren.” This momentous, poisonous relationship is presented here at last in one volume. Compellingly written, Eisenhower vs. Warren brings to vivid life the clash that continues to reverberate in political and constitutional debates today.

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In a groundbreaking new book, Kotlowski offers a surprising study of an administration that redirected the course of civil rights in America. Kotlowski examines such issues as school desegregation, fair housing, voting rights, affirmative action, and minority businesses as well as Native American and women's rights. He details Nixon's role, revealing a president who favored deeds over rhetoric and who constantly weighed political expediency and principles in crafting civil rights policy.

Herbert S. Parmet's Eisenhower and the American Crusades is a major assessment of the American presidency during the critical period of America at mid-century. The book follows the career of General Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1952, when he decided to leave his NATO command to campaign for the presidency, to his retirement at Gettysburg nearly nine years later. His entry into politics was well-timed. A mood of conservatism was sweeping the country; surveys indicated that the majority of Americans felt it was time for a change from two decades of executive control 'by those who had permitted events to get out of hand.'Parmet based his study of the Eisenhower years on massive research, conversations with leading figures of the era, and previously unreleased documents. This wealth of material has enabled him to provide answers to questions frequently asked about the thirty-fourth president: Was Eisenhower the kind, fatherly man millions grew up to love on their television or was this an image created by a shrewd politician who knew what the country needed in a trying time?Did he choose Richard Nixon as a running mate or was Nixon forced upon him by political necessities? Was the president intimidated by the appearance of power of Joseph McCarthy, and did the Army-McCarthy hearings influence Eisenhower's decision to involve the United States in Vietnam? Was Eisenhower concerned with the lack of progress in civil rights? Was he the right man for the right time in history or was he merely postponing the major crises of the 1960s?Parmet offers a convincing refutation of the idea of the Eisenhower years as being placid or boring. 'No years that contained McCarthy and McCarthyism, a war in Korea, constant fears of nuclear annihilation, and spreading racial violence, could be so described.' For Parmet, Eisenhower was a stabilizing force in a time of conflict. He may not have been a political genius, but he knew perhaps better than anyone else around him exactly what the people wanted and how they wanted it.

How Dwight D. Eisenhower led America through a transformational time—by a DC policy strategist, security expert and his granddaughter. Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, Ike was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, as well as his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He was a man of judgment, and steadying force. He sought national unity, by pursuing a course he called the "Middle Way" that tried to make winners on both sides of any issue. Ike was a strategic, not an operational leader, who relied on a rigorous pursuit of the facts for decision-making. His talent for envisioning a whole, especially in the context of the long game, and his ability to see causes and various consequences, explains his success as Allied Commander and as President. After making a decision, he made himself accountable for it, recognizing that personal responsibility is the bedrock of sound principles. Susan Eisenhower's How Ike Led shows us not just what a great American did, but why—and what we can learn from him today.