Includes bibliographical references (pages 601-621) and index.

Part I. Duty -- Ascent -- Star power -- Call to duty -- Crusade -- Part II. An age of peril -- Scorpions in a bottle -- Confronting McCarthy -- Dark arts for a Cold War -- Asian dominoes -- Taking on Jim Crow -- God, government and the middle way -- To the summit -- A formidable indifference -- Double cross at Suez -- Part III. Race, rockets and revolution -- The color line -- Ike's missile crisis -- Contending with Khrushchev -- Secret wars in the third world -- U-2 -- Fighting to the finish -- A new generation.

Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower is the most insightful and authoritative account ever written of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. It shows a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s. At home, he affirmed the central elements of the New Deal, fought the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and advanced the agenda of civil rights for Africans Americans. Abroad, he ended the Korean War, avoided a new quagmire in Vietnam, and charted a significant expansion of America's missile technology, while warning of the dangers of a powerful "military-industrial complex." Today, presidential historians rank Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, and William I. Hitchcock shows us why. Eisenhower was a gifted leader for whom the welfare of the country always came first. Now more than ever, Americans have much to learn from his leadership.