Dwight D. Eisenhower Book Summary

Dwight D. Eisenhower by Tom Wicker is an informative, concise, and engaging biography. As the title implies, this biography was about the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. A former World War II general, Eisenhower had a reputable career in the military and captured the hearts of millions of Americans, thus launching his campaign to become President in 1953. As President, Eisenhower was in the midst of a changing world, dealing with much abroad and domestically, such as the Cold War and the Supreme Court decision for school desegregation. While Wicker’s biography was informative in outlining Eisenhower’s election, presidency, and lasting impact, it fell short in describing Eisenhower holistically by largely focusing on his failures and not the positive outcomes of his presidency. Wicker’s thesis throughout the book was that “crisis widens presidential opportunity for bold and …show more content…
An accurate analysis of a biography is not complete with analyzing the content of the book – it must also analyze the content of an author’s character. Tom Wicker had a flourishing career as a journalist for the New York Times, even receiving awards such as the Nieman Fellowship from Harvard (McFadden). An important point to consider is that as much as he was a respected political journalist, he was not a historian. This caused Wicker to write about Eisenhower through a journalism lens, not a historical lens, which added political bias. Wicker even declared that he was “a devout supporter of Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent, Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois…[he even] raised a little money among [his] colleagues for the eloquent Stevenson” (Wicker 1). This was one of the opening lines of the biography, which set the tone for Wicker’s opposition against Eisenhower throughout the book. His political alignment as a Democrat clouded his objectivity as a