All about Ike

Eisenhower

By Carlo D'Este. Cassell Military Series. 864pp. $29.95

Reviewer :: David Sibley

Did General "Ike" Eisenhower have an affair with his driver, Kay Summersby? If he didn't, then what was a very close friendship certainly made tongues wag in the Allied high command. Just goes to show that perception is often reality in the hothouse atmosphere of military life.

Carlo D'Este goes into often exhaustive detail about Eisenhower's career during the war. For a nice guy, he had a volcanic temper - not surprising, when you read about what he had to put up with in the persons of Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Gen Omar Bradley and Gen George Patton. The squabbles of senior generals because of competing egos, differing national objectives, and often plain incompetence, held up the Allies in ending the sordid days of Nazi Germany.

The most interesting part of Eisenhower is the detail about Ike's family history, education and time at West Point. For students of American military history, this will become a reference work - for others, a cure for insomnia.