EISENHOWER: CAPTIVE HERO

In recapitulating Eisenhower's antecedence and career, Mr. Childs seems gradually to lose the man. The little aimless and proud boy, with his impoverished home of iron respectability, is affecting and believable. The lad unexpectedly sent to West Point begins, inwardly as well as outwardly, to disappear into uniform and military protocol. The Powers That Be catapult Eisenhower into supreme leadership- then comes glory, perhaps immortality- but how or why all this happened is left vaguely to Eisenhower's capacity to inspire confidence and work cooperatively with Allied Commanders. By the time of his Presidency, the Ike-entity utterly vanishes. There remains the public image, viewed critically: Ike is a peripatetic golfer; the taker of strong stands at Little Rock; the foreign policy hungler; the pathetic reassurer about American Sputnik progress..... What sets out as an appraisal of a person and his achievement, ends as a fierce if often inciaive political tract based upon the Eisenhower hero-myth. A book more apt to sell because of controversy than because of its objectivity.