On leaving office, Dwight Eisenhower’s ranking as president was fairly low. Over time, his reputation has risen to the point that he is now regarded as one of the top ten presidents in US history. This collection of essays asks, 'What lessons can we learn from Ike’s example as a leader?' Editor Polsky's introduction acknowledges that 'to appropriate the past for use in the present is … an inherently problematic enterprise,' yet the authors of these essays believe there is much to learn from Ike’s example. Eisenhower viewed leadership as 'the ability to decide what is to be done, and then to get others to want to do it.' The essays cover a great deal of territory, including the nature of Ike’s conservatism, dealings with Congress, party leadership, and civil rights (which David A. Nichols maintains is a stronger record than has been acknowledged). Perhaps the strongest essay is Polsky’s conclusion reexamining the importance of political opportunity to leadership. A valuable and useful addition to the literature on the Eisenhower presidency that challenges some of the accepted wisdom about Eisenhower’s leadership. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice Reviews

The Eisenhower Presidency is a valuable contribution to the literature on Eisenhower and on the presidency more generally. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Fred I. Greenstein, Princeton University

In my opinion, Dr. Andrew Polsky’s The Eisenhower Presidency: Lessons for the Twenty-First Century is the best and most important anthology of essays about the Eisenhower Presidency ever put together. The book consists of papers written by prominent presidential scholars and historians that were presented at a conference on the Eisenhower era at Hunter College in March, 2013. The book brightly illuminates major issues of Eisenhower’s presidency that remain pertinent today. To name a few, it covers the problem of civil rights in the 1950s, space and technology questions that developed in the 1950s, questions about Eisenhower’s innovative presidential style, the rise of conservatism as a political force in the late 50s, and a range of domestic and foreign policy topics including the Middle East. I have looked forward to a book like this on the Eisenhower presidency for a long time. I could not recommend The Eisenhower Presidency more highly.

David Eisenhower, University of Pennsylvania