Eisenhower, Soldier and President

Every time I take a trip somewhere, I always buy a book to add to my library.  As often as possible I try to get a book about the area I am visiting.  About a year ago I took a trip to Washington DC for about the 12th time but since I've seen just about every tourist attraction there is to see there, I decided I would finally visit that which I had been putting off all this time...the Pentagon.  I had never been all that excited about the Pentagon; when you get right down to it it's just one of the world's largest office buildings.  But I did go, and while I was there, I saw a hallway tribute to Eisenhower and thus, the book, Eisenhower, Soldier and President by Stephen E. Ambrose, came into my possession.  I also chose it because I thought it might be a good companion volume to the major biography I read last year, American Ceasar, by William Manchester, a biography of Douglas MacArthur.  Since I knew Eisenhower served as MacArthur's exec officer in the Phillipines, I was curious if there would be a different point of view presented.

Mr Ambrose is known as one of the great US historians, having written some 20 books, several of which have become quite well known.  Among them is a comprehensive 2-volume work on Eisenhower as well as this one which is a consolidation of those two volumes.  In my view Mr Ambrose does a good job of presenting Eisenhower's faults along with his positive traits, his failures as well as his triumphs.  Undoubtedly Eisenhower was a great general and as the primary architect of Operation Overlord (D-Day invasion), he deserves the accolades of his military accomplishments.  But what I really like about a well-done biography is to see the early years, the childhood influences which led to the way the subject reacts to experiences in adult life.  Mr Ambrose provides that for us here, taking the little boy from Abilene Kansas all the way to the Presidency.  Unfortunately, my hopes for the tie-in to MacArthur's Phillipine experiences were dashed as that realtionship was glossed over almost completely.  I suppose a biographer needs to keep to his subject and not let other notable figures of the time take over.

Most of the book deals with the Eisenhower presidency, a time in the 50's that most knowledgeable people refer to as the age of missed opportunities and Eisenhower himself as the "do-nothing president."  While Mr Ambrose does point out Eisenhower's penchant for stearing down the middle of the road, pushing off any responsibility in dealing with the racial divides of the country, and unwilling to deal with McCarthyism in any definitive way, he also spends time on the positive things such as keeping the budget in balance, establishing the Interstate Highway System, and keeping the peace for his entire 8 years as president. 

Along the way we do get to witness some great moments in history and meet the towering figures of the time such as Montgomery, Churchill, DeGaul, Stalin, Truman, Nixon, McCarthy, and his own family of Maime and son David.  I came away from this book with a much greater appreciation for the era of the 50's (I've never studied much from that decade) as well as a better understanding of how all of that led us to the 60's.  Mr Ambrose, I know, came under fire several years ago for plagarism (something about quotes not used correctly) but this book does not seem to ever be mentioned as a case of that.  This biography still is known as the definitive Eisenhower biography and I, for one, appreciate it.  I certainly have a much better understanding and "feel" for one of my nations true heroes while at the same time appreciate one of our more under-rated presidents. 

Sure wish we had him now.

American Caesar

This morning I completed the latest book in my morning reading program, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964 by William Manchester. Wow, what a read! This is a long biography, coming in at over 700 pages (not counting the lengthy bibliography and source material references). I bought this book back at the beginning of the year when I was on a trip to San Diego for work. I always pick up a book of some kind, usually nonfiction to help build my library and usually, I take years to get around to reading it. But this one seemed to fit my needs when I was ready and so I was very happy to tackle it.

This is, I believe, the best historical biography I have ever read...and I've read some great ones. Part of that may be due to the subject at hand, Douglas MacArthur, one of the more complicated personalities of history out there. A brilliant man, but flawed in several respects, he was such a major figure of American history and, indeed, world history. He was at once, a genius, a great leader of men, a supreme strategist, as well as an incredible egoist capable of monumental mistakes in judgement. I have heard numerous anecdotes throughout my life about this man but had never developed a complete picture of him or his life. William Manchester certainly satisfied that for me.

The book itself is delightful to read, packed not only with the facts of MacArthur's life and times, but also making a compelling case for MacArthur being one of history's greatest generals. We get a close-up look at his development of brilliant warfare strategies and how they came about. We see his tactics in war and we see how he reacts to his superiors and subordinates. We see his entire life, starting, actually before his birth with a good look at his father, a great general in his own right and we progress through his childhood and then his amazing career at West Point. We see his success in WWI and then spend a lot of time with him in the Pacific during WWII, and his ultimate shining moments as the near-emporer of Japan after the surrender. MacArthur seems to be mostly remembered for his time in the Korean War and his ultimate firing by Truman and that is truly unfortunate given his numerous remarkable accomplishments for so many decades prior.

But this book is far more than historical facts. The author gets behind the public personna and shows us the man himself. While reading the book, I felt like I knew MacArthur personally and was able to understand how and why he reacted to the great and tragic events of the 20th century. The book's title says it all...MacArthur was, indeed, the American Caesar. The author does a superb job of showing us all aspects of his character, making the reading of this book a truly great experience.

Night Over Water

I've completed another audio book: Night Over Water by Ken Follett. Regular readers of this blog will know that I listen to an audio book back and forth to work every day, about a 30 minute commute for me one way. I selected this one from the library because I have read 4 or 5 Ken Follett novels so far and while some have been better than others, I have never felt that I've wasted my time.

This novel takes place in 1939 just after England has entered World War II. It's told from multiple points of view, all from people who will take a flight aboard a Pan-Am Clipper (a truly luxurious (and historically accurate) airplane in the second 2/3rds of the book. This is sort of like a "Murder on the Orient Express" set-up although more thriller than who-dunnit mystery. Passengers include business people, aritocratic families, a debutante, a film star, a petty thief, etc. They all have reasons for being on this luxury plane ride across the Atlantic, some of them because they want to be there and some because they have to be. The thriller/action part of the plot surrounds the lead engineer of the plane who is forced to sabotage it in order to save his wife who has been kidnapped by mafia types in America. They want to spring one of their compadres from on board who is being transported back to jail in the US. In the end it turns out to be much more complicated than that even and most of the characters that were unknown to each other at the beginning are involved together in the action at the end.

This is a well-plotted novel; the suspense builds as we make our way through the story and we get to see events from several perspectives. Mr Follett does a great job building his characters and even though there are quite a lot of them, it is easy to follow the action because we know them so well. And he does a fantastic job of establishing the atmosphere. The descriptions of the scenes and especially the dialog of the characters really brought me in to the era. Sometimes it was like I was watching a Humphrey Bogart movie. The only problem I had was not with the novel itself but rather the production of the audio discs I was listening too. The narrator did a good job of voicing so many parts but it seemed like the whole thing had been spliced together one sentence at a time. It made it sort of disjointed and it definitely interfered with the "Losing oneself in the story" aspect. Regardless of that, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and rank it among the best of Ken Follett's work I have experienced so far.

Next audio book for me: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Coming in at a cool 24 discs this one's going to take me to Thanksgiving to finish...