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Newton, Jim Eisenhower: The White House Years ISBN 13 : 9780385523530

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9780385523530: Eisenhower: The White House Years
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Book by Newton Jim

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Chapter 1

1

The Lessons of Family

Ida Stover Eisenhower was a woman of special depth-cheerful and sunny, serious and devoted, a dedicated pacifist whose aversion to war was forged in the aftermath of the Civil War, into which Ida was born. Her memories of those days must have been dim-born in 1862, she barely experienced the war itself-but she came of age in Virginia, a land torn to pieces. Ida's mother died when she was five, her father when she was eleven, leaving her a small inheritance. She was raised by her mother's father, taught for a time, and then, in 1883, decamped for Kansas and college.

Ida's determination to get a college degree, so uncommon for a woman of her era, suggests her distinction. She was studious and religious, though hardly doctrinaire. She read Greek and consulted Greek texts of the Bible when she had questions about its commands. As a student at Lane University in Lecompton, Kansas, she met David Jacob Eisenhower, an aspiring engineer of German stock who had come west in 1878. Ida was a year older. They were married on September 23, 1885.

By 1890, David and Ida had two sons, as well as a burden and a grudge. Their wedding present from David's parents was a 160-acre farm and $2,000, but he had no interest in farming, so he mortgaged the land to his brother-in-law and used the money to open a store in Hope, Kansas. Hard times followed, and as farmers fell behind on their credit, the store suffered, then collapsed when Eisenhower's business partner stole what little cash there was left. The failure of that enterprise shadowed the Eisenhower family and impressed on David Eisenhower a devotion to frugality; never again would he go into debt or allow his family to borrow a dime.

The loss of his store wounded David, and those around him felt he never quite recovered. Ida was less rattled by the episode but no less resolute. So determined was she to see justice done that she taught herself the law, pining for a confrontation with the ex- partner that never came.

David took his family to Texas, where he secured work as a railroad engineer and tried to rebuild their lives. It was there, in a Texas thunderstorm on October 14, 1890, that Ida gave birth to her third son, David Dwight Eisenhower.

David may have been the family patriarch, but he was a brooding, remote presence, especially in his later years. He administered discipline and provided for his family, but he was serious to the point of being glum. Ida, by contrast, was the steadfast center of a boisterous home. Although she appears dark haired in some pictures, especially as she grew older, her children remembered her as blond and fair. She played the piano and often sang to herself. She was an accomplished baker who cooked as quickly as her sons could eat. She could whack the head off a chicken without remorse, impart gentle bits of wisdom, chuckle over mischief. "I have seldom seen an unsmiling photograph of her," recalled one of Ike's brothers.

Religion, too, was at the core of their lives. David Eisenhower was raised as a member of the River Brethren, a Pennsylvania Mennonite sect whose Kansas migration swept along the Eisenhower family. Of the nine River Brethren congregations that settled in Kansas in the 1880s, four were clustered in Dickinson County, where Abilene was located. They nevertheless remained a small sect, never numbering more than six hundred followers in the area. They practiced a firm, devotional faith, with emphasis on the moral value of work, the permanence of marriage, and an aversion to gambling, smoking, and drink. Dinner was followed by readings from the Bible; when members of the family fell ill, their fellow congregants prayed for their recovery. But if religion was central to the Eisenhower home, so was a spirit of inquiry. Though David grew up with the River Brethren, he and his wife dabbled with the Baptists and the Methodists and finally joined the Bible Students, a tiny Mennonite group devoted, as the name suggests, to biblical study.

Ida's force of will and David's financial distress combined to create, in some minds, the impression that David was a marginal figure in the Eisenhower home. Ida was indeed a source of great strength. She cared about her values and was entirely devoted to her sons. The slighting of David, however, does him an injustice. Ike recalled his father as a forceful parent, an occasional wielder of the hickory stick against his sons; he fought, usually successfully, to control a brooding temper. "He was not one to be trifled with," Ike wrote many years later, "unless you were prepared to take the consequences."

Their stay in Texas was brief. Soon after Dwight was born, the family returned to Kansas, where the Eisenhowers settled first into a small cottage, then into a modest home that they purchased from David's brother, Ike's uncle Abe. From that point on, David and Ida and their growing family of boys shared a two-story white clapboard ranch house, most of the boys sharing bedrooms in decidedly tight quarters: the home was 818 square feet, smaller than the office Dwight would eventually occupy as chief of staff of the Army.

Abilene was then, as it is today, a modest post on the Kansas plain, windswept in winter, blazing in summer. Wide porches shielded residents from the sun of the prairie, and dust gathered in the corners of every home. The sun beat down on the wheat that extended for miles in every direction. Shade trees shimmered in the evenings and supplied the switches used to discipline the Eisenhower boys. Floods enriched the soil and occasionally did damage. Cattle thundered through the rail yards, heading for eastern markets.

Though destined for a career of breathtaking consequence, Dwight gave bare indication of such potential in his early years. He jockeyed for position in a home of intense competition. Ida and David ran a formidable household where Ike was one of six brothers. Arthur was the oldest, followed by Edgar, then Ike; Earl, Roy, and Milton were younger. A seventh, Paul, died of diphtheria in infancy. Surrounded, Dwight had to wrestle for an identity. Even his nickname, Little Ike, was a nod to his brother Edgar, known in those years as Big Ike. Nor was school a source of distinction. He was a bright student but hardly a dazzling one. Ike's math teacher mildly recalled him as "a very capable and interesting boy." Ike himself recognized his limits. "Baseball, football, boxing were all I wanted to know," he confessed.

For Little Ike, Abilene was formative in ways both subtle and obvious. He fished and trapped and would remain comfortable sleeping in tents and wading in streams his whole life. He struggled with a powerful temper, once beating his fists until they were bloody because he was denied the right to trick-or-treat with his older brothers. He was fascinated by history, particularly military affairs and leaders. He took to sports and learned to play poker percentages with calculating skill. He assumed his share of responsibility in a working home where the boys made money raising and selling vegetables on a small plot near the house.

Ida rotated chores weekly to avoid fights. She was, among her many other characteristics, intensely devoted to fairness. Late in life, when her middle son had vanquished Hitler's Germany and earned the gratitude of the free world, Ida was asked what she thought of her "famous son." Her reply: "Which son do you mean?"

In addition to the family vegetable garden, the boys oversaw a small flock of chickens; they milked the family cow, tended the orchard, washed dishes, cleaned clothes. Among the chores as the boys grew older was cooking, and that, too, left a lasting impression on Ida's middle son. For the rest of his life, Eisenhower would cook to please family and friends-and to calm his nerves.

Ida would later describe Ike as the most difficult of her six boys, but she handled most flare-ups with equanimity. Problems that reached David were often solved with "the old leather strap," but Ida "would philosophize . . . As you thought it over years later, you realized what she had given you." That was no small feat with young Ike, for the boy manifested at least one outstanding trait: he was magnificently stubborn. One fistfight at age thirteen was destined for the history books not because he won it but because he and his combatant fought to exhaustion; by the time it was over, Ike "couldn't lift an arm." And when an infection overwhelmed him and threatened to cost him a leg, even in his delirium, Ike resisted. He enlisted Edgar, Big Ike, to fend off the doctor. Edgar stationed himself at the door to his brother's room, and Dwight, drifting in and out of consciousness, gritted his teeth and toughed it out. Finally, on what the doctor judged as the last opportunity to save him, they painted the young boy's body with carbolic acid. Ike screamed, but it stopped the creeping infection. The leg and the boy were saved.

Eisenhower in those years acquired an enduring and endearing folksiness, one that would ground his achievements in a solid sense of home. Take, for instance, the notes he appended to his final memoir. Among them: his stirring 1945 Guildhall address in London and his recipe for vegetable soup. And Abilene, too, supplied lessons and imagery of the Old West. In his later years, when Ike would visit home, he would often stop by the grave of Tom Smith, the town marshal in its wilder days, axed to death by local outlaws in 1870, just twenty years before Ike was born. Smith, his gravestone reads, was a "martyr to duty . . . who in cowboy chaos established the supremacy of law." Eisenhower extended a schoolboy fascination with Smith into a lifelong admiration. He loved the romance, the triumph of order, the paean to duty. From it was born, among other things, a devotion to Westerns.

An appreciation of history and the outdoors, self-reliance, and ruddy athleticism were among the traits Ike learned in Abilene-along with a fierce will and a clumsy way with women-but what may have most shaped him in those early years were his lessons ...
Revue de presse :

Praise for Jim Newton's Eisenhower: The White House Years

"Newton's book is thorough and reasonable....What makes it valuable now is the timing: We need this book and its insights to judge the vicious and counterproductive politics of these days. This is a book worth reading."
—Richard Reeve, LA Times

"An essential narrative....[Newton's] objective is to tell the story, and he does so well, inviting us to form our own opinions and giving us a sense of an era that seems both quaint and comfortable in our own age of harsh polarization."
The Wall Street Journal

"Drawing on declassified documents, Newton's narrative, especially of the many international crises, is clear, brisk, and insightful, a timely study of a master of consensus politics with lessons for today's polarized Washington."
Publishers Weekly

"[Newton's] well-researched account shows that Eisenhower was an engaged, decisive leader guided by some bedrock moral and political beliefs . . . A well-done presentation that helps correct enduring perceptions about an effective but misunderstood presidency."
Booklist

"A truly great book, spirited, balanced, and not just the story of President Eisenhower but of an era."
—Bob Woodward

"Jim Newton brings President Eisenhower to life, and we walk with him page by page as he’s transformed from epic General to two-term President. Newton navigates a fascinating journey from military leader to novice politician to one of the most beloved Presidents in our history."
—John F. Kerry, U.S. Senator

"Jim Newton does a masterful job illustrating the forces that confronted Dwight Eisenhower during his years in the White House, from nuclear politics to race relations to the federal debt and deficit. He paints a vivid portrait of a president struggling to find middle ground—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—but always with the good of the country in mind. While many Americans are intimately familiar with Eisenhower the general, less is known about Eisenhower the president. Newton artfully fills that void, examining the evolution of our 34th president from the invasion of Normandy to the political warfare of Washington."
—Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator

"Newton's contribution is as cogent an inventory of Eisenhower's White House years as I've ever read. He blends masterful writing with historic detail and provides the value-added of Ike as the man and the leader. This is a book for all who are interested in a better understanding of how America and the World were shaped post–WWII and for those who aspire to lead: Read Newton's book first."
—Chuck Hagel, Distinguished Professor, Georgetown University; U.S. Senator (19972009)

"Jim Newton has given us an entirely fresh look at Dwight Eisenhower - and his riveting book couldn't be more timely or useful today."
—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine

"Ike's wisdom, born of experience and intellect, is on display in this important book, which heightens appreciation for his leadership. Newton reveals, for instance, that after the Korean War, only one American soldier was killed in combat during Eisenhower's presidency. This volume contributes to our understanding of an outstanding human being."
—George P. Shultz, 60th U.S. Secretary of State

 “Dwight Eisenhower’s eight years as the 34th president of the United States marked a shining moment in American history. In short, it was a wonderful period of prosperity, peace and freedom. But during his presidency and for years afterwards, many believed that Ike was a decent but do-nothing president who left the hard work to others. In his book, Eisenhower: The White House Years, Jim Newton does a superb job of dispelling that false myth and describing Eisenhower as a dedicated chief executive who excelled at running the country.”
—James A. Baker, III, 61st U.S. Secretary of State

"Jim Newton's book is a fresh and welcome reminder that Dwight D. Eisenhower was not only a superb general, but a cunning, shrewd and surprisingly progressive politician, and one of our most important presidents. A very welcome book!"
—Michael Korda, author of Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

"As we enter another critical political season, there is little we can benefit from more than a knowledge of our 34th President, Dwight Eisenhower, his values and the giant decisions of his Presidency that those values motivated. Jim Newton's Eisenhower, The White House Years, simply and eloquently, delivers the man, his Presidency and, if America is paying attention, the life lessons that are his legacy."
—Norman Lear 

“Jim Newton has written a captivating book that reinforces the rising tide of positive studies of the Eisenhower presidency. Gracefully written and rigorously researched, The White House Years introduces the reader to ‘a great man at the height of his power,’ a master at ‘waging peace,’ more effectively than any other post-war president.”
 
—David A. Nichols, author of Eisenhower 1956 and A Matter of Justice
“Jim Newton’s brilliant reassessment of Eisenhower’s presidency is long overdue, and his book makes it clear that Ike was indeed a great president. Ike’s insistence on always doing the right thing for the country despite party pressure and personal predilection serves as a valuable model for politicians in all three branches of government. Jim Newton's book should be required reading on Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill.”
—William S. Sessions

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

  • ÉditeurDoubleday
  • Date d'édition2011
  • ISBN 10 038552353X
  • ISBN 13 9780385523530
  • ReliureRelié
  • Nombre de pages451
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9780767928137: Eisenhower: The White House Years

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ISBN 10 :  076792813X ISBN 13 :  9780767928137
Editeur : Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012
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  • 9781410441911: Eisenhower: The White House Years

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