AFFAIRS OF STATE: The Eisenhower Years

by Richard Rovere ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 23, 1956

This eminently readable collection of the author's articles which have appeared during the last four years principally in the New Yorker is an excellent definition of the present administration in Washington. As Mr. Rovere states in his introduction, the book is a journal of events and personalities written about at the time, and not an analysis in retrospect. Yet very full portraits of men and affairs of state emerge as their histories are knowingly recorded to set each freshly described happening in sharp relief. 1950 is the first dateline, when the Eisenhower boom was beginning to take its familiar shape, and there is the well reasoned point that the public's choice was a frivolous one. But the choice was a fact and starting from this precept Mr. Rovere accounts for the known and unknown aspects of Eisenhower, the man, that would have their bearing on Eisenhower, the president. After six years the suppositions have a solid validity. Continuing into the aspects of the campaign, characterized by its boldness and militance (and by Stanley High's un-lucid speech writing); the Taft- Eisenhower controversy; enigmatic Dulles' qualifications and curiously grounded hopes for the job of Secretary of State; Cohn and Schine, the comic inquisitors- each of the articles is distinguished by style and made vivid by the kind of thought that successfully encompasses the actions of men as individuals and as parts of a particular section of society. Journalism of the highest order.

Pub Date: March 23, 1956

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1956

Categories: NONFICTION