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John S. D. Eisenhower

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Brigadier General John S. D. Eisenhower, USA (ret.), the son of President Dwight Eisenhower, attended the United States Military Academy, graduating on June 6, 1944. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and the Korean War, remaining on active duty until 1963; then serving in the U.S. Army Reserve until retirement in 1975; attaining the rank of brigadier general.

 

Brigadier General John S. D. Eisenhower is the author of Letter to Mamie Edited and with Commentary No John S. D. Eisenhower; Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day; The Bitter Woods; They Fought at Anzio; Strictly Personal; So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848; Intervention! The United States Involvement in the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917; Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott; Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I; and, General Ike : A Personal Reminiscence.  He is also the co-author of Zachary Taylor: The 12th President, 1849-1850.

 

According to the book description of Zachary Taylor: The 12th President, 1849-1850, “Zachary Taylor was a soldier’s soldier, a man who lived up to his nickname, “Old Rough and Ready.” Having risen through the ranks of the U.S. Army, he achieved his greatest success in the Mexican War, propelling him to the nation’s highest office in the election of 1848. He was the first man to have been elected president without having held a lower political office.

 

John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of another soldier-president, shows how Taylor rose to the presidency, where he confronted the most contentious political issue of his age: slavery. The political storm reached a crescendo in 1849, when California, newly populated after the Gold Rush, applied for statehood with an anti- slavery constitution, an event that upset the delicate balance of slave and free states and pushed both sides to the brink. As the acrimonious debate intensified, Taylor stood his ground in favor of California’s admission—despite being a slaveholder himself—but in July 1850 he unexpectedly took ill, and within a week he was dead. His truncated presidency had exposed the fateful rift that would soon tear the country apart.”

 

According to the book description of Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day, “Dwight D. Eisenhower once remarked that "the history of alliances is a history of failure." This provocative, absorbing work, based on a study by the General and written by his son, is a history of one of the great exceptions, the most successful military alliance the world has ever seen—the Anglo-American military alliance of World War II. At once a study of the prodigious undertaking that brought millions of men and women together to defeat the Axis and a portrait of the great personalities who built and sustained the alliance, Allies offers vivid glimpses of war at the working level: on a convoy crossing the Atlantic, with a secret landing party on the coast of northern Africa, and with armored units in Tunisia. Eisenhower has crafted a powerful narrative and a most valuable contribution to the literature of World War II.”

 

The Library Journal said of So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848, “The war between the United States and Mexico, often passed over lightly as a sort of rehearsal for the American Civil War, is dealt with by Eisenhower ( The Bitter Woods ) as an event of major significance in the nation's history. (It was certainly major from the loser's point of view: Mexico gave up more than half its territory in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.) This well-written, comprehensive history of the war takes into account the political and diplomatic dimensions as well as the military. The two principal campaigns are traced in colorful detail: Zachary Taylor's battles in northeast Mexico, aggressively fought until Winfield Scott appropriated that general's best troops for his own amphibious landing at Veracruz, and Scott's over land drive on Mexico City against formidable opposition, brilliantly successful despite weak support from Washington. Eisenhower, son of the former president, suggests that Winfield Scott was the most capable soldier this country has ever produced. Of President James Polk, one of the three major characters in this lively narrative, the author remarks, "Manifest Destiny was not Polk's invention, but he was its ideal agent.”

 

Publisher’s Weekly said of Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I, “Starting from near zero, the U.S. and Gen. John Pershing created a war-winning army in less than 18 months; veteran historian Eisenhower (Agent of Destiny, etc.) tells how they did it in this fast-paced narrative. A retired brigadier general in the army reserves, Eisenhower (writing here with spouse Joanne) presents the U.S. involvement in the war from the perspective of statesmen and generals. Even for combat color, he focuses primarily on senior officers: Douglas MacArthur and George Patton, with his insouciant courage under fire; George C. Marshall; and lesser-known figures like Charles Summerall, who threw a whole army's rear echelons into compound confusion in order to give the 1st Infantry Division a chance to capture Sedan in the war's final days.

 

That kind of drive and energy was necessary given America's almost complete military unpreparedness. It took almost a year for the U.S. Army to put a single division of the American Expeditionary Force into battle. Without denying the administrative problems and the casualties caused by inexperience and improvisation, Eisenhower stresses the Americans' high learning curves at all levels. He argues as well that Pershing was an effective commander even in the Argonne campaign, the one most often cited as bringing the AEF nearly to gridlock, making a remarkably clear presentation of that confusing combat. Eisenhower sympathizes with Pershing's belief that the armistice was a mistake, that even a few days more might have convinced the Germans they had, in fact, been defeated in the field. It remains an arguable position, but the AEF emerges from these pages as the decisive instrument of an incomplete victory.”

 

Publisher’s Weekly said of General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence, “This thoroughly worthwhile memoir recalls the author's father in his association with various distinguished soldiers and statesmen of the past century. The roster begins with Fox Conner (a pre-WWII general and Ike's mentor), John J. Pershing (the AEF commander in WW I) and George Patton (when both he and Ike were officers in the Tank Corps of 1919). The final trio is Charles de Gaulle, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Winston Churchill. In the author's view, De Gaulle's French patriotism brought out the best and the worst in him, in dealing both with Ike and with his fellow countrymen. Monty never understood Ike, asked the impossible and grumbled when he didn't get it. And Churchill (at whose funeral Ike represented the U.S.) is inscrutably sui generis in the author's eyes as in those of so many others.

 

In between are sketches of MacArthur, Marshall and Patton (as a subordinate general). Possibly the most moving piece recalls the period of 1940-1941, the last days of the peacetime army, when the younger Eisenhower, now the author of such titles as Yanks and The Bitter Woods, was a cadet at West Point, and his father was dreaming of staying with troops in the coming war. But the author paints no one in rosy hues, not even his father, and his research puts them all in their proper context.”

 

According to the book description of They Fought at Anzio, “Italy was the scene of the longest, bloodiest, most frustrating, and least understood series of battles fought by the Western Allies during World War II. Now, John S. D. Eisenhower offers a new look at the Italian campaign, emphasizing the Anzio offensive an operation pushed by Winston Churchill that fell largely to American troops to carry out. It has been said that Anzio was a soldier s battle, remembered more for blood shed than for military objectives achieved. By focusing on the experiences of the soldiers who fought there and the decisions of commanders in perilous circumstances, They Fought at Anzio offers a new appreciation of the contributions of both and a new understanding of this unheralded theater of the war.”


Yanks : The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I
John Eisenhower  More Info

Zachary Taylor: The 12th President, 1849-1850 (The American Presidents)
John S. D. Eisenhower  More Info

Intervention!: The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917
John S. D. Eisenhower  More Info

The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge
John S. D. Eisenhower  More Info

Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day
John S.D. Eisenhower  More Info

The Truth Is Our Weapon: The Rhetorical Diplomacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower And John Foster Dulles
Chris Tudda  More Info

They Fought at Anzio
John S. D. Eisenhower  More Info

So Far from God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848
John S. D. Eisenhower  More Info

Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott
John S. D. Eisenhower  More Info

General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence
John Eisenhower  More Info
Letter to Mamie Edited and with Commentary No John S. D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower  More Info
Strictly Personal
John S. D Eisenhower  More Info

Kirkus reviews said of Agent of Destiny : The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott, “A great but frequently overlooked figure in America during the early decades of the 19th century now gets his due. Military historian Eisenhower (son of the late president, and author of Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1993, etc.) describes a natural leader of imposing stature, overweening pride, exceptional courage, and wide learning, who possessed considerable organizational and diplomatic skills along with outstanding martial instincts. Descended from a Scottish warrior who followed ``Bonnie Prince Charlie'' and escaped from bloody Culloden Moor, Scott was educated at William and Mary College and trained as a lawyer. But he was a born soldier: He loved the glamour of the military life. He raised a ragtag national army to professional levels and boldly recruited social outcasts like Irish and German immigrants, offering advancement to ambitious ethnic men when other professions did not. As the nation's youngest general, Scott distinguished himself in the War of 1812, and he was a hero of the Mexican War in the 1840s.

 

After a brilliant campaign fought entirely on foreign soil, he stormed and captured Mexico City despite considerable political maneuvering on the battlefield and the home front by a variety of influential enemies. In peacetime, he served successfully as a diplomat to the Canadians, the British, the Seminoles, and the Cherokees. Eisenhower argues that the outspoken Scott's military exploits vastly overshadowed those of Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War--but Taylor, who became president in 1850, was an astute politician and Scott, who lost his bid for the presidency in 1852, was not. Scott served 15 presidents, from Jefferson to Andrew Johnson, retiring as general- in-chief. In an afflicted old age, he organized the defense of Washington and started to build the Union Army in 1861. While Eisenhower largely skirts Scott's personal life, he offers a vivid portrait of Scott's times and accomplishments, and of the violent young nation in which he came to prominence.”

 

Amazon.com said of Intervention! The United States Involvement in the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917, “This history of the United State’s meddling in Mexican affairs features a cast of characters who don't make either side look very good. President Woodrow Wilson regularly misapprehends the situation to his south, prompting two violations of Mexican sovereignty: a naval occupation of Veracruz and an aggressive search by the American military for the bandit Pancho Villa, who raided a town in New Mexico. The Mexican politicians were hardly exemplars of democratic enlightenment, but the American response to their shenanigans sparked an enormous amount of national indignation in Mexico that still hasn't entirely vanished. Brigadier General John J. Pershing, the man charged with hunting down Villa, comes across as an upright soldier and one of the book's few noble figures; he's the central character in Eisenhower's most entertaining section.”

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