Silent Sentry: The Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.

This set of 4 lectures will focus on the life and times of one of America’s most consequential (but routinely underestimated) recent presidents. Following decades of bureaucratic obscurity in the US military, Eisenhower emerged in the 1940s as a war hero and key architect for US victory in Europe. Ascending to the presidency in 1953, his calm, removed, self-effacing governing style masked a hard-driving, hands-on executive whose skepticism and military knowledge guided America through a formative (and surprisingly perilous) period of the Cold War and one with deep long-term consequences for America’s reputation and leadership role in the world from the 1950s to our own time.