When President Dwight Eisenhower left Washington, D.C., at
the end of his second term, he retired to a farm in historic
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, that he had bought a decade
earlier. Living on the farm with the former president and
his wife, Mamie, were his son, daughter-in-law, and four
grandchildren, the oldest of whom, David, was just entering
his teens. In this engaging and fascinating memoir, David
Eisenhower—whose previous book about his grandfather,
Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945, was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize—provides a uniquely intimate account of the
final years of the former president and general, one of the
giants of the twentieth century.
In Going Home to
Glory, Dwight Eisenhower emerges as both a beloved and
forbidding figure. He was eager to advise, instruct, and
assist his young grandson, but as a general of the army and
president, he held to the highest imaginable standards. At
the same time, Eisenhower was trying to define a new
political role for himself. Ostensibly the leader of the
Republican party, he was prepared to counsel his successor,
John F. Kennedy, who sought instead to break with
Eisenhower’s policies. (In contrast, Kennedy’s successor,
Lyndon Johnson, would eagerly seek Eisenhower’s advice.) As
the tumultuous 1960s dawned, with assassinations, riots, and
the deeply divisive war in Vietnam, plus a Republican
nominee for president in 1964 whom Eisenhower considered
unqualified, the former president tried to chart the correct
course for himself, his party, and the country. Meanwhile,
the past continued to pull on him as he wrote his memoirs,
and publishers and broadcasters asked him to reminisce about
his wartime experiences.
When his grandfather took
him on a post-presidential tour of Europe, David saw
firsthand the esteem with which monarchs, prime ministers,
and the people of Europe held the wartime hero. Then as
later, David was under the watchful eye of a grandfather who
had little understanding of or patience with the emerging
rock ’n’ roll generation. But even as David went off to
boarding school and college, grandfather and grandson
remained close, visiting and corresponding frequently. David
and Julie Nixon’s romance brought the two families together,
and Eisenhower strongly endorsed his former vice-president’s
successful run for the presidency in 1968.
With a grandson’s love and devotion but with a
historian’s candor and insight, David Eisenhower has written
a remarkable book about the final years of a great American
whose stature continues to grow.
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