Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volumes 14-17, The Presidency: The Middle Way, The

The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volumes 14-17, The Presidency: The Middle Way. Edited by Louis Galambos and Daun Van Ee. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. xxviii, 2,945 pp. $195.00. ISBN 0-8018-4752-4. In 1970 Alfred Chandler and Stephen Ambrose published the first five volumes of Eisenhower's personal and public papers. These volumes covered Eisenhower's involvement in World War II. Multivolume installments since 1970 have documented his tenures with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as president of Columbia University. The current release presents papers from Ike's first presidential term. Project veterans Galambos and Van Ee selected documents from the collections at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, that illustrate the person rather than the office. In their introduction, the editors interpret Ike's foreign policy as seeking a "middle way" between Communism and reaction and his domestic policy as a compromise between creeping socialism and scrapping the New Deal entirely (p. xvi).

contraicting contemporaries doubts aoout Ike's leadership abiiity, the editors write that the president's "informal" style, rather than the strength of his leadership, differed from that of his predecessors (pp. xxiv-xxv). The documents are well chosen, and the introduction, the detailed notes that accompany each entry, and the chronological-topical organization all provide context for reading the documents. In addition, an extensive bibliographical essay about primary sources, a long list of secondary works, a thorough index, and a day-by-day chronology of Eisenhower's activities during his first term constitute over half of the seventeenth volume. -MARTY OLLIFF, Auburn University Archives

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