Eisenhower in War and Peace

Wesley Donehue
2 min readSep 3, 2021

Today seems like a great time to post this book review as we stare at the results of electing a weak President. Last week I tweeted “Joe Biden is the epitome of weakness.” Someone replied “who is the epitome of strength?” I think they were baiting me into answering “Donald Trump.” Instead I replied “Dwight D Eisenhower.”

Many Presidents exuded strength. Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Reagan and yes, Trump. Washington is obviously in a league of his own. Grant was a strong general, but he pretty much bungled being President. Eisenhower was both an amazing strategic military leader and a strong President.

The book is broken into two parts. The first tells the story of Eisenhower’s climb up through the military during wartime, culminating with his time as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during WW2. As a huge fan of WW2 history, this part of the book was very exciting for me.

During his transition time, which I didn’t know a lot about, Eisenhower served as President of Columbia University and then as the first Supreme Commander of NATO.

The book then transitions into his second part, the two terms of Eisenhower’s presidency. His focus on civil rights and American infrastructure as well as the establishment of NASA and a number of international incidents were all things I knew. What I didn’t know and found incredibly interesting was his very rocky relationship with Richard Nixon.
If you want to know what the complete opposite of weak Joe Biden looks like, read this book and learn about strong Dwight D Eisenhower. I love reading WW2 history and presidential bios so this book was tailor made for me. I definitely recommend.

#53 in 2021

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Wesley Donehue

🧞‍♂️ Entrepreneur 🗑 Investor 🏊‍♂️🚲🏃 Solid middle of the pack endurance athlete ☀️ Positive Vibes 📚 Now using this mostly for book reviews