Editor's Note: In a conversation with the editors of American Heritage recapitulated here, General Omar N. Bradley spoke about the years of his closest association with Eisenhower, from 1943 through 1945. Following his service in World War II, General Bradley served as Army Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Editor's Note: General Mark W. Clark was Commander in Chief of U.S. Ground Forces in Europe in 1942. After the war he became chief of U.S. forces in Austria, and from 1952 to 1953 he commanded the United Nations forces in Korea. Here, he tells of his association with Eisenhower at the beginning of the war and the events leading up to Ike's appointment as Commander in Europe.
Editor's Note: The following account is from a conversation the editors of American Heritage had with Milton S. Eisenhower in 1969. Dr. Eisenhower was a lawyer and educator and the youngest of the three Eisenhower brothers.
It was a quiet, law-abiding place. Everyone was putting something in: the town was putting in paved streets, Dad was wiring our house, I was able to equip our home with a serviceable gas water-heater. When the first automobile came rolling into town (a White steamer, as I recall), everyone stopped to look and make comments on its impracticality.
Editor's Note: The following account is from a conversation the editors of American Heritage had with Edgar Eisenhower in 1969. Eisenhower, aka "Big Ike," was a lawyer and businessman and the second-oldest of the Eisenhower brothers.
Editor's Note: Ray Locker is the author of Haig's Coup: How Richard Nixon's Closest Aide Forced Him from Office and Nixon's Gamble: How a President’s Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration.
Editor's Note: Susan Eisenhower, a consultant and expert on international policy and security, has recently published How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions, based on years of research into how her grandfather made his biggest decisions by relying on a core set of principles and gave our country eight years of peace and prosperity. She is also Chairman Emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute.
Dwight Eisenhower felt that a key role for a head of state was to unify the country, and after he became president in 1953, he made national unity arguably his highest priority for the next eight years. Ike was utterly dedicated to the oath he had taken to defend the Constitution, the pledge he first made as a young cadet at West Point.
As Nathaniel Philbrick makes clear in his cover story in American Heritage this month, few events in American history were as fraught with hardship and surprise as the maiden voyage of the Mayflower. Delays set the ship’s departure back nearly a month in 1620, forcing it to set sail from England in September, rather than August.
Editor's Note: David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of 15 books including first-rate biographies of Walt Whitman, John Brown, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His latest is Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times, an ambitious and wide-ranging biography connecting Lincoln to his cultural environment in antebellum America. Publishers Weekly calls the book “magisterial and authoritative."
