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Book Review: ‘Ike: An American Hero’

In his introduction to “Ike: An American Hero,” Michael Korda writes that “a reputation can be revised by a single great book.”

David McCullough did that for Harry Truman and John Adams in two best-selling biographies that Korda edited.

Now Korda, former editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, is out to defend Dwight Eisenhower from being “ridiculed as an old fuddy-duddy in the White House” of the 1950s, forever overshadowed by the youth and glamour of his martyred successor, John Kennedy.

Korda makes a strong case for Eisenhower the man and the five-star general.

But his treatment of Eisenhower the president seems an afterthought, summarized in only 83 of 779 pages.

It’s a good, but not great, book.

It offers context, not revelations. It’s built more on published materials than original research.

In terms of style, “Ike” is a pleasure to read. It’s filled with rich details of military strategy and descriptive character sketches of colleagues and rivals, including George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, who could have sprung from novels.

Eisenhower was less flamboyant, but in Korda’s view, more competent and better suited to leading and holding together the coalition that won World War II — an outcome that was far from inevitable.

Korda is taken by Eisenhower’s personal qualities — competent yet self-effacing, “born with a deep dislike of muddle.”

Korda reluctantly explores the rumors of Ike’s wartime romance with his glamorous British driver, Kay Summersby.

Without elaborating, a footnote mentions “the author had the pleasure of talking briefly” to Summersby shortly before her death in 1975, when he published her posthumous memoir, “Past Forgetting: My Love Affair With Dwight D. Eisenhower,” a book whose credibility Korda now seems to question.

He sympathizes with Mamie Eisenhower’s jealousy and concludes that Summersby probably fell in love with Ike, “though whether the relationship was consummated is, of course, quite another question, and surely nobody’s business” — a standard more popular in Eisenhower’s era than now.

Korda argues that Eisenhower, as president, deserves more credit for his civil rights record and that in Vietnam, he “saw the writing on the wall” more clearly than Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson.

Even as president, Eisenhower distrusted “professional” politicians, which helps explain his frosty relations with both his predecessor, Harry Truman, and his own vice president, Richard Nixon.

Korda leaves it to readers to speculate whether Eisenhower’s pragmatic moderation would find a home in today’s Republican Party or what he would make of the war in Iraq. But his book offers much to fuel such discussions.

• Ike: An American Hero. By Michael Korda, Harper, 779 pages, $34.95.