NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"The Christian Science Monitor - St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
"Magisterial."--"The New York Times"
In this extraordinary volume, Jean Edward Smith presents a portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower that is as full, rich, and revealing as anything ever written about America's thirty-fourth president. Here is Eisenhower the young dreamer, charting a course from Abilene, Kansas, to West Point and beyond. Drawing on a wealth of untapped primary sources, Smith provides new insight into Ike's maddening apprenticeship under Douglas MacArthur. Then the whole panorama of World War II unfolds, with Eisenhower's superlative generalship forging the Allied path to victory. Smith also gives us an intriguing examination of Ike's finances, details his wartime affair with Kay Summersby, and reveals the inside story of the 1952 Republican convention that catapulted him to the White House.
Smith's chronicle of Eisenhower's presidential years is as compelling as it is comprehensive. Derided by his detractors as a somnambulant caretaker, Eisenhower emerges in Smith's perceptive retelling as both a canny politician and a skillful, decisive leader. He managed not only to keep the peace, but also to enhance America's prestige in the Middle East and throughout the world.
Unmatched in insight, "Eisenhower in War and Peace" at last gives us an Eisenhower for "our" time--and for the ages.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Praise for "Eisenhower in War and Peace"
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" A] fine new biography . . . Eisenhower's] White House years need a more thorough exploration than many previous biographers have given them. Smith, whose long, distinguished career includes superb one-volume biographies of Grant and Franklin Roosevelt, provides just that.""--The Washington Post"
"Highly readable . . . Smith] shows us that Eisenhower's] ascent to the highest levels of the military establishment had much more to do with his easy mastery of politics than with any great strategic or tactical achievements."--"The""Wall Street Journal"
"Always engrossing . . . Smith portrays a genuinely admirable Eisenhower: smart, congenial, unpretentious, and no ideologue. Despite competing biographies from Ambrose, Perret, and D'Este, this is the best."--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"No one has written so heroic a biography on Eisenhower] as this year's "Eisenhower in War and Peace" by] Jean Edward Smith."--"The National Interest"
"Dwight Eisenhower, who was more cunning than he allowed his adversaries to know, understood the advantage of being underestimated. Jean Edward Smith demonstrates precisely how successful this stratagem was. Smith, America's greatest living biographer, shows why, now more than ever, Americans should like Ike."--George F. Will

A New York Times Notable Book of 1996

It was in tolling the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835 that the Liberty Bell cracked, never to ring again. An apt symbol of the man who shaped both court and country, whose life “reads like an early history of the United States,” as the Wall Street Journal noted, adding: Jean Edward Smith “does an excellent job of recounting the details of Marshall’s life without missing the dramatic sweep of the history it encompassed.”

Working from primary sources, Jean Edward Smith has drawn an elegant portrait of a remarkable man. Lawyer, jurist, scholars; soldier, comrade, friend; and, most especially, lover of fine Madeira, good food, and animated table talk: the Marshall who emerges from these pages is noteworthy for his very human qualities as for his piercing intellect, and, perhaps most extraordinary, for his talents as a leader of men and a molder of consensus. A man of many parts, a true son of the Enlightenment, John Marshall did much for his country, and John Marshall: Definer of a Nation demonstrates this on every page.

Originally published in 1963. In 1958 Nikita Khrushchev demanded that the United States, Great Britain, and France withdraw from West Berlin. His demands eventually resulted in the division of Germany's capital city through the building of the Berlin Wall. In The Defense of Berlin, Jean Edward Smith discusses Berlin from the time of arrangements set during the war through 1962, with an emphasis on the effect that the crisis of division had on the city.