As the Middle East has trembled in recent weeks, the Obama administration has struggled for a coherent and forceful response — one that reconciles American interests with American values, that balances geopolitics with the moral example of democracy. For an object lesson, the administration might look to the example of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 and might start by reading David A. Nichols' new book on that fateful year.
Nichols' "Eisenhower 1956" captures the president and the nation as both battled a series of difficulties, including the president's shaky health, his reelection and a pair of overlapping foreign crises. The result is a riveting and relevant analysis of a sequence of events that placed the great nations of the period at the brink of a world war. That we know so little about the clashes of 1956 is testament not to their unimportance but to their deft handling by a great American president.
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