Book Reviews

untapped. Nonetheless, The Feathers of Condor is a worthy addition to the growing body of research on Operation Condor’s origins and operations. ✣✣✣

William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s.New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018. 650 pp. $35.00.

Reviewed by David M. Watry, Mountain View College

William I. Hitchcock contends that his book The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s “offers a comprehensive account of the president and his times and concludes with a decisive verdict: Dwight Eisenhower must be counted among the most consequential presidents of modern American history” (p. xvi). He further claims that Eisenhower left a lasting legacy in foreign policy and domestic policy and transformed the office of the presidency. Hitchcock writes that Eisenhower was “prin- cipled but adaptive, ideological at times but usually pragmatic, a problem solver who dominated his cabinet, the military, and the bureaucracy and put his imprimatur on the age” (xvi). He offers a highly favorable portrait of Eisenhower, one that is much too flattering in its depiction of the 34th president of the United States. Hitchcock, a professor of history at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, conducted his research at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene Kansas, the National Archives in College Park, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at his own university. This might suffice for a book solely about Eisenhower’s domestic policy, but in a study that purports to be “comprehen- sive” about the United States and the world in the 1950s it falls short. For a complete understanding of Eisenhower during the Cold War, a scholar ought to look at archival material not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom, France, Ger- many, Russia, and China. Furthermore, some of the relevant documents in the United States remain classified. So, maybe not surprisingly, the strength of Hitchcock’s narrative is his account of the domestic side of Eisenhower’s two terms as president. He successfully demonstrates how in the 1950s many people believed they were living in the best of times. The members of this new Silent Generation in the United States focused their time and at- tention on the economy, the home, the family, and the church. Religion, with its heavy emphasis on family life, enjoyed an incredible popularity, which reflected Eisenhower’s beliefs about the importance of religious devotion. After the Great Depression and the Second World War, family life had become the focal point of people’s lives. The divorce rate dropped, and the number of marriages and births climbed ever higher. The public enjoyed an improved standard of living through Eisenhower’s middle-path politics, which promoted moderate fiscal and monetary policies. Eisenhower pushed Congress to pass the Federal Highway Act of 1956 that built a new national highway

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system. These policies provided U.S. citizens peace and happiness by giving them a simple and pleasant middle-class life in the growing suburbs of the country. In dealing with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, segregation, and Jim Crow laws in the South, Eisenhower proved, for the most part, to be adaptive, principled, and pragmatic. Hitchcock portrays him as a man whose outlook on race reflected his times. Although Eisenhower did not support Brown v. Board of Education and continued to believe that the federal government, especially the executive branch, had little or no role to play in racial integration, he enforced the Supreme Court’s decision by sending troops into Little Rock. When analyzing Eisenhower’s foreign relations, Hitchcock offers misleading ac- counts of episodes in the Cold War. If he had consulted British archives, he might have changed his conclusions about Eisenhower’s actions in the Far East. Indeed, a careful reading of his own narrative undercuts his contention that the president did not make nuclear threats against North Korea and that the Korean War ended purely by luck. After Iosif Stalin’s death, his successors in Moscow feared that Eisenhower planned to expand the war with the possible use of nuclear weapons. This concern about brinksmanship brought an end to the Korean War. A year later, Eisenhower faced another crisis in Indochina. Hitchcock mistakenly insists that Eisenhower re- strained hawks from the State Department and the Pentagon from initiating war. The truth is that Eisenhower fervently believed in an international war against Commu- nism in the Far East, whereas the British preferred a negotiated peace settlement at the Geneva Conference of 1954. Eisenhower actively worked behind the scenes to sabotage the peace talks. In response, the British hindered U.S. efforts to form the South East Asian Treaty Organization, and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden negotiated a peace deal by overcoming countless U.S. objections. Finally, Eisenhower publicly threatened China with nuclear war over the two tiny and inconsequential Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Depictions of him as anything other than a menacing and dangerous leader are misguided. Hitchcock’s explanation for the Suez crisis is also problematic. He fails to mention the president’s involvement in Operation Omega, a secret Anglo-American operation designed to undermine or overthrow Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Operation Straggle, a secret Anglo-American plan to overthrow the Syrian government in 1956. In back- ing the Egyptians over the British and French, Eisenhower created the conditions for future U.S. intervention in the Middle East. The Eisenhower Doctrine permanently ensnared the United States in Middle Eastern politics. Yet, Hitchcock, who endorses the significance of these disastrous foreign policy decisions, rightly condemns many of Eisenhower’s secret and illegal wars in the Third World. After seven years of being president, Eisenhower seriously blundered in his handling of the U-2 incident. He foolishly authorized plans to overthrow and kill the Cuban leader Fidel Castro and repeatedly advised president-elect John F. Kennedy to be ready to go to war in Laos. By these actions alone, Eisenhower revealed himself to be neither an exceptional nor a transformational president.

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Still, Hitchcock makes a good case for Eisenhower as a “consequential” presi- dent. Eisenhower’s legacy is truly far-reaching, unfortunately apparent in many of the trouble spots in the world today, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Cuba, and Vietnam. Hitchcock’s judgment about Eisenhower is that “he radiated authenticity, idealism, sincerity, and charisma, and these personal qualities were the keys to his po- litical success” (p. xii). Authenticity, however, suggests faithfulness between the public persona and one’s private convictions. In many ways, Eisenhower was far more devi- ous and Machiavellian than authentic. He presented his idealistic side to the public but kept his pragmatic and often dark side hidden. Eisenhower’s charisma and politi- cal victories helped him publicize his successes while skillfully and cleverly hiding his failures. ✣✣✣

Kyle Burke, Revolutionaries of the Right: Anti-Communist Internationalism and Paramil- itary Violence in the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 2018. 351 pp. $35.00.

Reviewed by Lesley Gill, Vanderbilt University

The presidency of Donald Trump has focused considerable attention on the rise and mainstreaming of the far right in the United States. Many historians view its emer- gence as a domestic phenomenon embedded in reaction to the New Deal and the labor, civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements of the latter half of the 20th century. Kyle Burke argues that such explanations are incomplete. In Revolu- tionaries of the Right, he documents the transnational dimensions of the far right and explores how U.S. conservatives forged ties to anti-Communist forces abroad during the Cold War. These connections shaped how they viewed both foreign and domestic events. Driven by the belief that indecisive members of Congress, out-of-touch intel- ligence agencies, and weak-kneed liberals impeded the U.S. government’s ability to defeat Communism, a mosaic of far-right groups and individuals advocated for pri- vate money, private groups, and mercenaries to fill the void. Although the enemy that united them disappeared with the end of the Cold War, their legacy continues to shape the present. Revolutionaries of the Right explores the growth of the extreme right—what Burke calls the “anticommunist international”—during the Cold War. The book focuses on far-right U.S. citizens—wealthy conservative activists, retired military personnel and intelligence officers, and mercenaries—and their collaboration with like-minded in- dividuals and movements abroad, from Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central America to Southern Africa and the Middle East. The book opens in the 1950s, dur- ing the early Cold War, and proceeds through the anti-Communist campaigns di- rected at Eastern Europe, which were primarily propagandistic, to later support for

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