At Ease

Ike’s popular memoir is full of anecdotes about his life. Here are stories told for the simple pleasure of telling them. In warm and personal terms, the military hero who became our 34th president writes about his life, his acquaintances-- both celebrated and little known-- and the history that unfolded before his eyes.

We learn about his life at West Point and before, in turn-of-the-century Kansas, when the Wild West had just become the rural West. Here are dreams of adventure that carried Dwight Eisenhower from the wrong side of the tracks in Abilene to the leadership of a great alliance and military expedition, a great university, and a great nation. Those dreams, he thought, could probably be best realized at Annapolis. And yet—through a fortuitous turn of events—the future naval officer settled at West Point. From the Point to the presidency is a chronicle that now belongs to history.

In the anecdotes assembled here, Eisenhower remembers his tour of duty in the Canal Zone, life with young wife Mamie, and how, on patrol in tropical terrain, he was tutored in Clausewitz, Tacitus, and Plato by a little-known and wonderful general named Fox Conner. He recalls his first encounter with the spirited colonel, George Patton, and his appointment, later, as aide to the already controversial general, Douglas MacArthur.

Roosevelt, Churchill, Zhukov, Marshall, Bradley—men, events, and institutions that became household words are touched upon here and illumined as are the lesser-known people and places in a peaceful man’s peacetime existence. We are given—as friends—stories written by a president at ease and rendered with all the sincerity, geniality, conviction, and persuasiveness the entire world had come to know. Softcover. 400 pgs. Author: Dwight D. Eisenhower
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