Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World

From the highly regarded biographer of Abraham Lincoln, a riveting dual examination of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, exploring the two men's...more

From the highly regarded biographer of Abraham Lincoln, a riveting dual examination of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, exploring the two men's remarkable similarities and equally striking differences in the context of mid-twentieth-century American culture and politics.  William Lee Miller makes clear that the similarities between these two statesmen were emblematic of their Midwestern upbringings and their generation, but that within the framework of similarity, they differed markedly in their shaping experiences and choices, and in the roles they played in the high politics of the time. Miller examines their contrasting experiences during World War I and between the world wars. He shows us Truman, the quintessential politician, and Eisenhower, the thoroughgoing anti-politician, in explicit and implicit collaboration during the war-torn 1940s; their dual, but different, roles in bringing the war to an end and shaping the postwar world; their growing disapproval of each other; and, finally, in 1952, the passing of presidential power from one to the other.   less