"Ike"

Just finished Michael Korda's book, Ike. It is a 725 page account of the WWII hero and our 36th(?) president.

I have been reading biographies the past two years to get a better picture of history as seen through the eyes of the biographers of some presidents and others. I started several years ago (about 30) by reading Fawn Brody's book on Thomas Jefferson when it first came out. That accelerated since I retired to a current bio of Ben Franklin and then I got into a series of books written by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I recently read the Andrew Jackson book which came out last spring.

My next book is Nimitz written by E. B. Potter. I wanted to get a different perspective about the WWII Pacific campaign.

But, back to Ike. The perspective I brought to the book was from my own recollection of the Eisenhower administration. We had to learn the cabinet members in school in 1953 and I still remember those names. I don't recall cabinet members for any other president in my memory. I also remember the Army-McCarthy hearings on TV and the Kruschev antics in the late 1950s. So this book was fun for me to read. I enjoyed the perspective of Korda on Ike in England as the SHAFE commander. Other than Monty and Churchill, well, Patton and Bradley, I did not know much about the personalities Ike had to manage.

If you are into that sort of stuff, it was a good read, Kay Summersby not withstanding.