The Age of Eisenhower: the 1950's

Smithsonian Associates, Interview Series

The Not Old Better Show, 2018, image: Adobe Stock

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, image courtesy Smithsonian

In a 2017 survey, presidential historians ranked Dwight D. Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, behind the perennial top four: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Teddy Roosevelt. Join me and our guest, historian William Hitchcock, below left, who shows in his new book, “The Age of Eisenhower,” (book cover below) that this high ranking is justified. Eisenhower’s accomplishments were enormous, and loom ever larger from the vantage point of our own tumultuous times.

A former general, Ike kept the peace: he ended the Korean War, avoided a war in Vietnam, adroitly managed a potential confrontation with China, and soothed relations with the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. He…