Ebook Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas
By getting the Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle To Save The World, By Evan Thomas in soft documents, as spoken formerly, lots of benefits can be gotten. Besides, as just what you recognize, this publication provides fascinating declaration that makes individuals curious to review it. When you choose to read this book, you could begin to understand that publication will certainly constantly provide good ideas. This book is very straightforward as well as provides big results.
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas
Ebook Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas
When someone pertains to you to see the collection as well as get some publications to check out, what's your reaction? Often, that's not the proper time to see it. Yeah, careless is the huge factor of why lots of people prefer to most likely to the collection. You could likewise have no sufficient time to choose. Now, we introduce for you book soft file or on-line publication to read. Without mosting likely to the collection, without spending quality time for mosting likely to guide shops, this sort of publication is served by internet with net link at first.
Reviewing is kind of have to do daily. Like exactly what you do your daily tasks, consuming or doing your everyday activities. And currently, why should be reading? Reading, one more time, could help you to discover new way that will certainly buy you to life better. That's not what you call as the commitment. You can check out Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle To Save The World, By Evan Thomas in the leisure as additional activities. It will not also obligate you to review it for numerous web pages. Just, by actions as well as you can see just how this publication interestingly.
Currently, you might know well that this publication is mostly advised not only for the visitors who like this topic. This is also advertised for all individuals and also public form culture. It will certainly not limit you to review or otherwise guide. However, when you have started or begun to review DDD, you will understand why precisely the book will provide you al favorable points.
When other individuals are still waiting on guide available in the book store, you have done the good way. By visiting this website, you have actually been 2 progressions. Yeah, in this site, the soft data of the Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle To Save The World, By Evan Thomas is provided. So, you will not run out to own it as yours. In this site, you will find the link and the link will certainly guide you to obtain guide file directly.
Review
Praise for IKE'S BLUFF:"With grace, insight, and originality, Evan Thomas has written a brilliant and engaging book about the most important of subjects: how close we came to Armageddon in the seemingly placid 1950s. Thomas's Eisenhower is a canny savior, a president who kept the peace through feint and bluff. No one writes more astutely or more honestly than Evan Thomas. This is the work of a master of storytelling at his best."―Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power"Evan Thomas has written an insightful and penetrating study of my father, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dad was a hard man to know; he played it close to the chest. So despite my extensive exposure to him throughout forty six years, I still found myself learning new aspects, some of which, I must admit, are a bit painful. But the balance that Thomas achieves between Eisenhower the public servant and Eisenhower the man is, in my opinion, as close to the mark as we are likely to see."―John Eisenhower"Evan Thomas's profoundly important book shows how the card-playing general who did as much as anyone to win World War II became the president most adroit at preserving peace. Behind his open smile, Eisenhower was a secretive and subtle leader with quiet moral courage. By projecting confidence while keeping his intentions concealed, he became the model of a nuclear-age peacekeeper. Thomas has produced a fascinating history that is also a brilliant guide to great leadership."―Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs"Dwight Eisenhower was a great general and President because he was a great leader, and Ike's Bluff uncracks the code. Evan Thomas's original and fascinating book is an immersion in the Eisenhower School of Leadership, with lessons not only for Presidents and military officers but leaders in other arenas of American life operating in moments of both tranquility and rapid change. Especially in these times, Thomas's book is an essential reminder that strong leadership can be exercised with kindness, morality and respect for opponents."―Michael Beschloss, author of The Conquerors"[Thomas is] a five-star biographer who blows apart that image [of Ike as a bumbling old man] with devastating detail."―Vanity Fair"A bustling, anecdotal book with a high-concept premise. [Thomas] approaches the ever more changeable Eisenhower legacy with new and intriguing questions."―Janet Maslin, The New York Times"Well-researched and highly readable...Thomas' account is sure to appeal to older readers who can recall the mandatory duck-and-cover drills in the classroom and to others with an interest in a fascinating and pivotal period when the nation was in better hands than many at the time probably realized."―The Associated Press"Thomas has written a book that elucidates Eisenhower's wisdom for general readers."―Richmond Times-Dispatch"A thoroughly researched, tightly organized and briskly written biography...Thomas is especially skilled at bringing characters of the era to life..."―James Ledbetter, Washington Post"Highly absorbing."―Tom Alderman, Huffington Post
Read more
About the Author
Evan Thomas is the author of several bestselling works of history including The War Lovers, Robert Kennedy, Sea of Thunder and, with Walter Isaacson, The Wise Men. Currently teaching at Princeton University, he lives in Washington, D.C.
Read more
Product details
Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (September 10, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316091030
ISBN-13: 978-0316091039
Product Dimensions:
5.4 x 1.4 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
349 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#162,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Dwight David Eisenhower(1890 -- 1969) served from 1953 -- 1961 as the 34th president after a heroic military career in which he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during WW II. Proceeded by Harry Truman and followed by John Kennedy, Eisenhower's presidency tended to be poorly regarded in its immediate aftermath. But Eisenhower's presidency continues to attract attention and debate. Beginning in the late 1960's, scholars began revisiting Eisenhower's leadership style and accomplishments to find that he was a president of both force and subtlety. Early in 2012, Jean Edward Smith published a lengthy and highly laudatory biography of Eisenhower that has received substantial critical attention.Eisenhower in War and Peace Smith covers Eisenhower's entire life rather than focusing on his presidency. Evan Thomas' new book "Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World" (2012) is much more narrowly focused. Thomas covers only Eisenhower's presidency, and considers almost exclusively his foreign policy rather than his domestic programs. A Washington insider, Thomas has written extensively on 20th Century American history.The title "Eisenhower's Bluff" refers to the central characteristic of the president's enigmatic foreign policy. In public, Eisenhower appeared a smiling, confident, avuncular war hero who frequently spoke in fractured syntax and who displayed a fondness for playing golf. Eisenhower as also a skilled a fiercely competitive poker and bridge player. In these games, and as a general, he learned how to hold his cards and his feelings. The "bluff" refers to Eisenhower's attitude towards the use of nuclear weapons. As Thomas points out, with his presidency and with the United States possession of a nuclear arsenal, Eisenhower became the first person to literally hold the fate of the world in his hands.Eisenhower's foreign policy was based on a doctrine called "Massive Retaliation" under which war would be averted and avoided by the United States threat to resort to nuclear weapons, even in seemingly local conflicts. Eisenhower seemed to be convinced that nuclear weapons had made conventional warfare obsolete. In seeming contradiction to this policy, Eisenhower was fully aware of the terrible character of the nuclear bomb and was convinced that such weapons should never be used. Eisenhower's foreign policy, for Thomas, turned upon the threat to use nuclear weapons, not their use. Thomas summarizes his study of Eisenhower early in the book."The 1950s were boringly peaceful (or are remembered that way) only because Eisenhower made them so. Eisenhower governed by indirection, not just because he preferred to, but also because he had to. His ability to save the world from nuclear Armageddon entirely depended on his ability to convince America's enemies-- and his own followers-- that he was willing to use nuclear weapons. This was a bluff of epic proportions."Thomas offers a number of telling anecdotes to explain Eisenhower's bluff. The first involves a meeting with Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State, who advised Eisenhower to determine for himself when, if at all, he would commit to the use of nuclear weapons and to "tell no one" what he decided. Then, in 1958,the poet Robert Frost visited the White House to present Eisenhower with a book of poems. Frost inscribed the book: "[t]he strong are saying nothing until they see." Eisenhower wrote in response "I like his maxim perhaps best of all."Thomas book is in two parts, each of which considers one of Eisenhower's two terms as president. Thomas describes the many foreign policy crises in the Eisenhower years beginning with Korea, and continuing through Vietnam, Formosa, the Suez Canal, Berlin, and much more. In these and other crises, many advisors close to the president were willing to opt for the use of nuclear weapons, a prospect Eisenhower seemingly found unthinkable. Eisenhower governed, Thomas argues, through indirection and through deliberately sending mixed and confusing signals to achieve his goals. Eisenhower was willing to threaten in public the use of nuclear power while working in a different direction behind the scenes. The process was messy but it kept the United States out of war during Eisenhower's presidency. Thomas argues that Eisenhower's method of governance was dependent upon the esteem in which Eisenhower was held and upon his stature as a war hero and could not have been used effectively by any other American leader.The book describes Eisenhower's complex relationship with John Foster Dulles, his Secretary of State, and with his brother Allan Dulles, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Eisenhower could reign in his sometimes blustering Secretary of State but he fared less well with the CIA and the many covert operations in which it engaged during the 1950s and thereafter.The book describes well the tensions of the Cold War and the exaggerated views held by many, not including Eisenhower, about the Soviet threat at the time. The launching of Sputnik and the fears of an in fact nonexistent "missle gap" brought a great deal of fear to those growing up in the United States at the time. Thomas suggests that Eisenhower would have had difficulty defusing these fears at the time because doing so would have required the release of highly secret information and of the means of its collection.Following Eisenhower's presidency, his successors adopted a doctrine called "Flexible Response" which Eisenhower had rejected. This doctrine allows for the prosecution of limited war without the nuclear threat. As Thomas points out, the use of flexible response has achieved questionable results in places such as Vietnam and perhaps Iraq and Afghanistan.Scholars remain divided on the nature of Eisenhower's commitment to "Massive Retaliation" and whether the threats to use nuclear weaponry in fact constituted a "bluff". Thomas offers a detailed examination of Eisenhower's governance which on the whole offers a highly favorable assessment of Eisenhower and his accomplishments, while recognizing that the policy would not have worked in the hands of his successors. Thomas concludes:"Eisenhower understood with profound insight,the moral ambiguities,the wrenching dilemmas,the dreary expediencies, and the quiet moral courage required of a life of duty,honor,country..... That he could be, as he made his lonely and sometimes inscrutable way, so resolutely cheerful, so determinedly optimistic, was a kind of miracle born of faith."This book will be of interest to readers with a passion for 20th Century American history, particularly to aging baby boomers such as myself.Robin Friedman
Evan Thomas does nice work, "The War Lovers" and "Robert Kennedy: His Life" are both splendid books. In "Ike's Bluff" Thomas continues to provide a readable, insightful look into a historical figure or events in this case focusing on the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. Much has been written about Ike's wartime service and I confess that's where my study of his career has largely ended. "Ike's Bluff" focuses on the year's in the Oval Office and reminds us of how turbulent the late 50's and early 60's really were; it wasn't all sock hops and Rock Around the Clock but also the potentially catastrophic Cold War and nuclear arms race. We see much of Ike's behind the scenes life and learn what was really going on behind his seemingly amiable, distant, golf playing public personal. It turns out that the "bluff" was Eisehower's refusal to tell literally anyone what his policy would be on using nuclear weapons agains the nation's adversaries thus allowing him to bluff against the likes of Kruschev and Mao. Ike was supposedly a superb poker player (and bridge player) and with his well known credentials as a 5-star general who liberated Europe against the Nazi's he kept our foes guessing whether he'd use nukes or not in a conflict. He was a warrior first and statesman second so the threat was credible enough that it ultimately kept the peach for his two terms. He was privately horrified by the power of nuclear weapons and frustrated by his military and civilian advisors who kept advocating for more and more of them to add to our already huge arsenal. Finishing this book on the eve of the 2016 presidential election as Donald Trump wins presents an interesting contrast. How far our political landscape has changed over the decades where we had experienced, thoughtful, statesmen occupy the White House in the past and today we have an inexperienced reality TV star with a flare for inflammatory rhetoric getting ready to occupy that office. "Ike's Bluff" isn't the most exciting book you'll ever read but it is an insightful view into a somewhat enigmatic man and his impact on world history.
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas PDF
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas EPub
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas Doc
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas iBooks
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas rtf
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas Mobipocket
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas Kindle
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas PDF
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas PDF
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas PDF
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World, by Evan Thomas PDF
This post was written by: Author Name
Your description comes here!
Posting Komentar