Synopses & Reviews
A groundbreaking narrative of the relationship between Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon — from the politics that divided them to the marriage that united their families.
Richard Nixon was a young Navy officer when he first saw Dwight D. Eisenhower through a storm of tickertape as Manhattan celebrated the end of the war in Europe. Seven years later, Nixon was Eisenhower’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket — the beginning of a political and personal relationship that lasted for nearly twenty years. Despite a gulf that separated them by age and temperament, their association evolved into a collaboration that helped to shape the nation’s political ideology, foreign policy, and domestic goals, from civil rights to the civilian space program.
Ike and Dick relates much that occurred out of public view, such as the sensitive discussions among senior staffers concerned about Nixon’s proper role when Eisenhower suffered illnesses that might have incapacitated him. Based on deep archival research and interviews with dozens of men and women who knew and worked with both men, including family members, it offers fresh views of Nixon, the striving tactician, and the legendary general, a distant man with a warm smile who could, and did, make Nixon’s life miserable.
In rediscovering the circle that surrounded them and a cast that includes Billy Graham, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Martin Luther King Jr., powerful newspaper columnists, early television personalities, and even the chilly young adman H.R. Haldeman, Ike and Dick provides an intimate view of America during the Cold War and of two men whose influence has never waned.
Review
“This is superlative, compelling, can’t-put-it-down history. Jeffrey Frank is an elegant writer, with a novelist’s eye; the relationship between Eisenhower and Nixon, in all its complexity and weirdness, is a treasure chest that he unpacks brilliantly. This is the perfect time for us to reconsider the trajectory of the Republican Party in the late twentieth century, and this book is a perfect way to do it.” Russell Baker, The New York Review of Books
Review
“The mating of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon was one of the strangest and most fateful in all of American political history. With psychological acuity and perfect pitch for the not-so-distant past, Jeffrey Frank has captured the story beautifully. Ike and Dick will surprise and greatly entertain as well as enlighten you.” Joe Klein, Time columnist
Review
“One of the best books ever written about Richard Nixon….Ike and Dick shows how much life remains in artfully straightforward narrative history.” The New Yorker
Review
“Ike and Dick is a highly engrossing political narrative that skillfully takes the reader through the twisted development of a strange relationship that would help shape America’s foreign and domestic agenda for much of the 20th century.” The New York Times Book Review
Review
“Engrossing…worthwhile….At the heart of Ike and Dick are marvelously cringe-inducing anecdotes that capture an awkward relationship that improved over time without ever truly blooming.” The Wall Street Journal
Review
“Jeffrey Frank is a nimble writer with a clear-eyed understanding of power….[Ike and Dick] reveals the nuances of the complex relationship between Nixon and the man under whom he served as vice president, Dwight Eisenhower, nuances that should resonate with Republicans who are waging an internecine struggle over the future of their party.” The Miami Herald
Review
“Frank constructs a marvelous account of political history as well as astute portraits of the two men…the rich, inside-politics mix of rumor and maneuver in which connoisseurs of political history love to marinate.” Booklist
Review
“Fascinating.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Review
“Jeffrey Frank knows a good story when he sees one, or sees two….Ambition and hesitation, intrigue and indifference, scheming and serenity, infuse 31 chapters. His saga evokes the seamy underside of the sunny 1950s…..[A] detailed and charming history.” Martin F. Nolan
Review
"Ike and Dick is an elegant example of how pleasurable political history can be when written by a skilled teller of fictional tales who has a careful reporter’s respect for facts. It is top-drawer as political history, unusually well written, and stuffed with forty pages of notes providing sources for an extraordinary variety of information. It is also an entertaining human tale of generational conflict, filled with the elements that enliven popular novels and soap operas." The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Perhaps the most intriguing—and dysfunctional—political marriage in history was the one between the subjects of Jeffrey Frank's meticulously researched Ike and Dick….a highly engrossing political narrative that skillfully takes the reader through the twisted development of a strange relationship that would help shape America’s foreign and domestic agenda for much of the 20th century.” < -="" b="" -=""> - < -="" i="" -=""> - The New York Times Book Review, - < -="" -=""> - cover - < -="" -="">
Synopsis
A groundbreaking narrative of the relationship between Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon--from the politics that divided them to the marriage that united their families.
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had a political and private relationship that lasted nearly twenty years, a tie that survived hurtful slights, tense misunderstandings, and the distance between them in age and temperament. Yet the two men brought out the best and worst in each other, and their association had important consequences for their respective presidencies.
In Ike and Dick, Jeffrey Frank rediscovers these two compelling figures with the sensitivity of a novelist and the discipline of a historian. He offers a fresh view of the younger Nixon as a striving tactician, as well as the ever more perplexing person that he became. He portrays Eisenhower, the legendary soldier, as a cold, even vain man with a warm smile whose sound instincts about war and peace far outpaced his understanding of the changes occurring in his own country.
Eisenhower and Nixon shared striking characteristics: high intelligence, cunning, and an aversion to confrontation, especially with each other. Ike and Dick, informed by dozens of interviews and deep archival research, traces the path of their relationship in a dangerous world of recurring crises as Nixon's ambitions grew and Eisenhower was struck by a series of debilitating illnesses. And, as the 1968 election cycle approached and the war in Vietnam roiled the country, it shows why Eisenhower, mortally ill and despite his doubts, supported Nixon's final attempt to win the White House, a change influenced by a family matter: his grandson David's courtship of Nixon's daughter Julie--teenagers in love who understood the political stakes of their union.
Synopsis
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had a political and private relationship that lasted nearly twenty years, a tie that survived hurtful slights, tense misunderstandings, and the distance between them in age and temperament. Yet the two men brought out the best and worst in each other, and their association had important consequences for their respective presidencies.
In Ike and Dick, Jeffrey Frank rediscovers these two compelling figures with the sensitivity of a novelist and the discipline of a historian. He offers a fresh view of the younger Nixon as a striving tactician, as well as the ever more perplexing person that he became. He portrays Eisenhower, the legendary soldier, as a cold, even vain man with a warm smile whose sound instincts about war and peace far outpaced his understanding of the changes occurring in his own country.
Eisenhower and Nixon shared striking characteristics: high intelligence, cunning, and an aversion to confrontation, especially with each other. Ike and Dick, informed by dozens of interviews and deep archival research, traces the path of their relationship in a dangerous world of recurring crises as Nixons ambitions grew and Eisenhower was struck by a series of debilitating illnesses. And, as the 1968 election cycle approached and the war in Vietnam roiled the country, it shows why Eisenhower, mortally ill and despite his doubts, supported Nixon's final attempt to win the White House, a change influenced by a family matter: his grandson David's courtship of Nixon's daughter Julie — teenagers in love who understood the political stakes of their union.
Synopsis
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had a political and private relationship that lasted nearly twenty years, a tie that survived hurtful slights, tense misunderstandings, and the distance between them in age and temperament. Yet the two men brought out the best and worst in each other, and their association had important consequences for their respective presidencies.
In Ike and Dick, Jeffrey Frank rediscovers these two compelling figures with the sensitivity of a novelist and the discipline of a historian. He offers a fresh view of the younger Nixon as a striving tactician, as well as the ever more perplexing person that he became. He portrays Eisenhower, the legendary soldier, as a cold, even vain man with a warm smile whose sound instincts about war and peace far outpaced his understanding of the changes occurring in his own country.
Eisenhower and Nixon shared striking characteristics: high intelligence, cunning, and an aversion to confrontation, especially with each other. Ike and Dick, informed by dozens of interviews and deep archival research, traces the path of their relationship in a dangerous world of recurring crises as Nixons ambitions grew and Eisenhower was struck by a series of debilitating illnesses. And, as the 1968 election cycle approached and the war in Vietnam roiled the country, it shows why Eisenhower, mortally ill and despite his doubts, supported Nixons final attempt to win the White House, a change influenced by a family matter: his grandson Davids courtship of Nixons daughter Julie—teenagers in love who understood the political stakes of their union.
About the Author
Jeffrey Frank was a senior editor at The New Yorker and the deputy editor of the Washington Post’s Outlook section and is the author of four novels, including the “Washington Trilogy”—The Columnist, Bad Publicity, and Trudy Hopedale. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Diana. They have one son.