Evan Thomas’s “Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World” is an examination of Dwight Eisenhower’s record that seeks to understand how he successfully kept the United States out of a major war during the eight years of his presidency. It is in keeping with the recent trend in complimentary revisionist histories of the administration, like “Eisenhower in War and Peace,” by Jean Edward Smith, and “Eisenhower: The White House Years,” by Jim Newton. Thomas tells us that once Eisenhower “extricated America from the Korean War in 1953,” his mission was to “avoid any war.” For that reason, Thomas, who teaches writing and journalism at Princeton and is the author of several books, concentrates on Eisenhower’s foreign policy and national security decisions to the exclusion of almost everything else. The president’s civil rights record, for example, is mentioned only briefly, and as a demonstration of his leadership talents.
