Ikes Bluff, Evan Thomas
Ikes Bluff, Evan Thomas
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Ike's Bluff
President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World

Author: Evan Thomas

Narrator: Brian Troxell

Unabridged: 13 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/25/2012

Synopsis

Evan Thomas's startling account of how the underrated Dwight Eisenhower saved the world from nuclear holocaust.

Upon assuming the presidency in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower set about to make good on his campaign promise to end the Korean War. Yet while Eisenhower was quickly viewed by many as a doddering lightweight, behind the bland smile and simple speech was a master tactician. To end the hostilities, Eisenhower would take a colossal risk by bluffing that he might use nuclear weapons against the Communist Chinese, while at the same time restraining his generals and advisors who favored the strikes. Ike's gamble was of such magnitude that there could be but two outcomes: thousands of lives saved, or millions of lives lost.

A tense, vivid and revisionist account of a president who was then, and still is today, underestimated, Ike's Bluff is history at its most provocative and thrilling.

About Evan Thomas

Evan Thomas is coauthor, with Walter Isaacson, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made and the author of The Man to See: The Life of Edward Bennett Williams; The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared; The Early Years of the CIA; and Robert Kennedy: His Life. He is the assistant managing editor of Newsweek magazine, and he lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Goodreads review by robin on September 04, 2024

Eisenhower's Lonely Presidency Dwight David Eisenhower(1890 -- 1969) served from 1953 -- 1961 as the 34th president after a heroic military career in which he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during WW II. Proceeded by Harry Truman and followed by John Kennedy, Eisenhower's presidency tende......more

Goodreads review by Mara on August 23, 2017

I found this book to be completely fascinating as it touched on themes at the nexus of US history, game theory, behavioral economics, psychology, decision making, the role of science in policy and, well, a lot of other stuff in which I maintain an avid interest. Ike's Bluff is not a gene......more

Goodreads review by John on December 02, 2012

As is the case with many of my Baby Boomer peers, I've long viewed Eisenhower's two terms in the White House as a sort of historical void. Certainly things happened while he was the leader of the free world, there's just not much known about it. After reading "Ike's Bluff" by Evan Thomas, I can point......more

Goodreads review by Jill on November 26, 2012

A number of new studies of Dwight Eisenhower have reassessed him in a much more positive light than he was previously considered. (Historical revisionism of the Eisenhower Administration is not a new phenomenon, but it has picked up speed of late.) Evan Thomas joins the latest list of scholars who a......more

Goodreads review by Godlarvae on July 25, 2013

Ike was a legend in my home while I was 8 to 16 years old. My Salt Lake City grandparents included him in their evening prayers daily, my Grandmother Gibson concerned that he was "not looking at all well". As it turned out, he was not well. He was no "caretaker" of American Government either, as mod......more

Quotes

Terrific Praise for The War Lovers:

No biographer at work today has a surer feel for the human dimension of history than Evan Thomas...The War Lovers is as good as popular history gets."—Jon Meacham, author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

"In his absorbing narrative of men who found duty or fulfillment or personal meaning in a war for empire-and of other men, like William James, who feared that such a quest would rot the nation's soul-Thomas has illuminated, in a compulsively readable style, a critical moment in American history. This is a book that, with its style and panache, is hard to forget and hard to put down."—Ronald Steel, New York Times Book Review

"Thomas has delivered an innovative, frequently entertaining and valuable retelling of an episode that set the pattern for more than a century of foreign military adventurism. This timely book is a cautionary tale about how the psyche of powerful and ambitious leaders may matter more than fact-or even truth-when the question of war arises."—James McGrath Morris, The Washington Post

"Thomas takes some risks in his biography of Theodore Roosevelt and his cohorts, trying to get not just inside their actions, but inside their heads. The result is an intriguing examination of the pull that war has on men."—Steve Weinberg, Minneapolis Star Tribune

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