Cover image for The President and the apprentice : Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961
The President and the apprentice : Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961
Title:
The President and the apprentice : Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961
Author:
Gellman, Irwin F., author.
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
New Haven : Yale University Press, [2015]

©2015
Physical Description:
xviii, 791 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary:
More than half a century after Eisenhower left office, the history of his presidency is so clouded by myth, partisanship, and outright fraud that most people have little understanding of how Ike's administration worked or what it accomplished. We know-or think we know-that Eisenhower distrusted his vice president, Richard Nixon, and kept him at arm's length; that he did little to advance civil rights; that he sat by as Joseph McCarthy's reckless anticommunist campaign threatened to wreck his administration; and that he planned the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. None of this is true. This book reveals a different Eisenhower, and a different Nixon. Ike trusted and relied on Nixon, sending him on many sensitive overseas missions. Eisenhower, not Truman, desegregated the military. Eisenhower and Nixon, not Lyndon Johnson, pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through the Senate. Eisenhower was determined to bring down McCarthy and did so.
Language:
English
Contents:
Part one: 1952-1957. The nominees -- The fund crisis -- To victory -- The General as a manager -- The worst kind of politician -- The collision -- Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and civil rights -- Eisenhower and civil rights: the first term -- Ike, Nixon, and Dulles -- Nixon in Asia -- The battles over Asia -- Trouble with good neighbors -- The U.S. response to neutralism -- Incumbent politics -- The ill-will tour versus the big lie -- The incapacitated President -- The Hutschnecker fiction -- Ike's decision to run -- Nixon's agony -- Stassen's folly -- the land of smear and grab -- The Hungarian revolution and the freedom fighters -- Part two: 1957-1961. Ike and Dick return -- Prelude to the struggle -- The Civil Rights Act of 1957 -- Little Rock and its consequences -- The implosion -- The steel solution -- Nixon in Africa -- Ike's Cold War -- A near-death experience -- Inside and outside the kitchen -- Ike's hopes collapse -- Ike, Nixon, Kennedy, and Castro -- Conclusion: Ike and Dick -- Appendix: Eisenhower's notes on the "Checkers speech."
ISBN:
9780300181050
Format :
Book