{"product_id":"book-at01","title":"Eisenhower","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Newton's contribution is as cogent an inventory of Eisenhower's White House years as I've ever read. He blends masterful writing with historic detail and provides the value-added of Ike as the man and the leader.”\u003cbr\u003e—Chuck Hagel, Distinguished Professor, Georgetown University; U.S. Senator (1997\u003cb\u003e–\u003c\/b\u003e2009)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNewly discovered and declassified documents make for a surprising and revealing portrait of the president we thought we knew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmerica’s thirty-fourth president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter-in-chief. This new look reveals how wrong they were. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb and refused to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, \"McCarthywasm.\" He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession, built an interstate highway system, turned an $8 billion deficit in 1953 into a $500 million surplus in 1960. (Ike was the last President until Bill Clinton to leave his country in the black.) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe President Eisenhower of popular imagination is a benign figure, armed with a putter\u003cb\u003e, \u003c\/b\u003ea winning smile, and little else. The Eisenhower of veteran journalist Jim Newton's rendering is shrewd, sentimental, and tempestuous. He mourned the death of his first son and doted on his grandchildren but could, one aide recalled, \"peel the varnish off a desk\" with his temper. Mocked as\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eshallow and inarticulate, he was in fact a meticulous manager. Admired as a general, he was a champion of peace. In Korea and Vietnam, in Quemoy and Berlin, his generals urged him to wage nuclear war. Time and again he considered the idea and rejected it. And it was Eisenhower who appointed the liberal justices Earl Warren and William Brennan and who then called in the military to enforce desegregation in the schools.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRare interviews, newly discovered records, and fresh insights undergird this gripping and timely narrative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJIM NEWTON\u003c\/b\u003e is a veteran journalist who began his career as clerk to James Reston at the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e. Since then, he has worked as a reporter\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eat the \u003ci\u003eAtlanta Constitution\u003c\/i\u003e and as a reporter, bureau chief and editor at the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, where he presently is the editor-at-large\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eand author of a weekly column. He also is an educator and author, whose acclaimed biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren, \u003ci\u003eJustice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in 2006. He lives in Pasadena, CA.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49339334852912,"sku":"BDat01","price":27.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/143535-at01-Square.jpg?v=1734020639","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-at01","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}