Janet Maslin: Review of Evan Thomas's "Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World"

Janet Maslin writes book reviews for the New York Times.

Until very recently, Dwight D. Eisenhower has done a remarkably good job of hiding in plain sight. The Eisenhower era, the Eisenhower jacket and the still in-the-works Eisenhower memorial (planned for Washington) attract more news attention than the man himself does....

Even this year, when new books and reprints about the 34th president abound and Eisenhower revisionism is on the rise, the subject remains below the radar, or at least without wide readership. Evan Thomas’s “Ike’s Bluff,” a bustling, anecdotal book with a high-concept premise, aims to change all that.

Unlike Jean Edward Smith’s heftier “Eisenhower in War and Peace,” a major biography that arrived this year, Mr. Thomas’s account does not span the full Eisenhower story. It focuses on the presidential years (1953-61) and concentrates on a matter of strategy. “Having done as much as any man to win World War II, Ike devoted the rest of his public service to keeping America and the world out of World War III,” Mr. Thomas asserts....