John S. D. Eisenhower modestly explains General Ike as "a son's view of a great military leader -- highly intelligent, strong, forceful, kind, yet as human as the rest of us." It is that, and more: a portrait of the greatest Allied military leader of the Second World War, by the man who knew Ike best.
General Ike is a book that John Eisenhower always knew he had to write, a tribute from an affectionate and admiring son to a great father. John chose to write about the "military Ike," as opposed to the "political Ike," because Ike cared far more about his career in uniform than about his time in the White House.
Portraits of Ike's relations with soldiers and statesmen, from MacArthur to Patton to Montgomery to Churchill to de Gaulle, reveal the many facets of a driven, headstrong, yet diplomatic leader. They reveal a man who was brilliant, if flawed; naÏve at times in dealing with the public, yet who never lost his head when others around him were losing theirs. Above all, General Ike was a man who never let up in the relentless pursuit of the destruction of Hitler.
Ike managed to pull together history's greatest invasion force and to face down a determined enemy from Normandy to the Bulge and beyond. John Eisenhower masterfully uses the backdrop of Ike's key battles to paint a portrait of his father and his relationships with the great men of his time.
General Ike is a ringing and inspiring testament to a great man by an accomplished historian. It is also a personal portrait of a caring, if not always available, father by his admiring son. It is history at its best.
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“The author, Dwight Eisenhower’s only child (an older son died in infancy), was a West Point cadet during World War II who occasionally visited his father during the titanic conflict. Combining his personal vantage point with his insights as a notable military historian in his own right, Eisenhower here discusses a gallery of Ike’s famed associates: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, and Winston Churchill. The author met all of them and incorporates his personal observations into the more detached descriptions of their influence on or interaction with his father’s rise to command the Allies in Europe…With such personalities plus the author’s perspective on historical disputes, these recollections are sure to find an eager audience.”
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