"The Hidden Hand at Work?"

"The reason that Eisenhower sustained high levels of popularity has nothing to do with the empty pronouncement that he knew right from wrong. A good soldier to the last, he knew not to rock the boat. He preserved New Deal programs, shunned controversy, kept his meddling in other countries’ affairs out of public view, and sometimes concealed outright the most unsavory aspects of his presidency. In the 1950s, Americans for the most part were content with this kind of leadership. The man who had defeated the Nazis helped guide them safely through the early Cold War. But more than a few citizens could see that Eisenhower also allowed right-wing demagoguery to fester, the civil rights struggle to suffer, the problems of the inner city to languish, and the conundrums of the superpower rivalry to remain acute and unresolved. It was in part because these Americans saw what Eisenhower had wrought during his two terms that in the ensuing years they decided, with all due respect, that they wanted something different."

David Greenberg in The New Republic reviews Jean Edward Smith's Eisenhower in War and Peace.