sleepy
I was skeptical about the book at first. I'm very interested in this issue, especially since my visit to the Brown v. Board of Education Museum in Topeka, Kansas. But the author is a Republican speechwriter and I was worried that the author's view may be skewed and sycophantic. (After reading Harlow Giles Unger's biography of James Monroe, another book by an author drooling over his subject would be too hard to take.) But so far, Pipes' impression of his subject is a pleasant surprise. He describes Ike, warts and all. Simply put, Ike is a man of his time. He's not a rabid civil rights advocate, he comes with many of the prejudices of his generation (referring to African-American soldiers in one memo as "darkies"). But he's also someone whose point of view is evolving. His experience at seeing how African-American soldiers fought at the Battle of the Bulge has raised his esteem for them. He sees the need for progress, but wants to take that progress at a slow pace.
A good description of what to expect from the book can be found in this summary by a writer at Publisher's Weekly:
"A former speechwriter for Arnold Schwarzenegger and co-author of the 2004 Republican platform, Pipes uses his insider's perspective to look at the Eisenhower presidency in the age of desegregation. Though Pipes can fawn, he doesn't pull punches, showing Eisenhower at his most ignoble (refusing to comfort the mother of a lynched black boy), manipulative (overtly soliciting Chief Justice Earl Warren to rule conservatively in Brown v. Board of Education) and wrongheaded (remarking that Southerners are not "bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes"). Pipes argues, however, that such examples belie the President's complex and ultimately fortuitous take on the situation: personally sympathetic with blacks, Ike nevertheless felt that the government couldn't legislate morality and favored gradual integration, frustrating black rights champions like Thurgood Marshall but helping to defuse the increasingly volatile mood of the country.
"When the chips were down, of course, Eisenhower defended the ruling without hesitation, famously sending in the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock when Arkansas's governor refused to integrate. An unflattering reminiscence of a difficult time in American politics, Pipes's book nevertheless reminds readers how far the country has come."
I'll give you a final review of the book once I've completed it. So far however, I'm glad I put it on my "to read" list.