Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life
There is hardly a shortage of books about Dwight Eisenhower, but Carlo  D'Este'sEisenhower: A Soldier's Lifestands tall in this forest by  virtue of the author's insistence on a too-often forgotten rule of biographers:  show--don't tell about--the subject. Though D'Este doesn't neglect Eisenhower's  early years (his sketch of the man's rambunctious West Point years is  hearteningly entertaining), the book concentrates on his military career,  including his years of treading water in the Philippines. By far the most  trenchant sections, however, deal with World War II (including a keen look at  the little-discussed North African campaign.) We see Ike, who had a famous  temper and, when angry, a most indelicate vocabulary, chain-smoking cigarettes  and unable to sleep in the weeks leading to D-day; refusing--out of disgust for  German atrocities--to be present at the signing of the articles of surrender;  bantering, though his heart was heavy, with enlisted men; wrestling  contentiously with MacArthur and Field Marshall Montgomery. We read excerpts of  his letters to Mamie and are privy to, perhaps, his laying the groundwork for a  political career.A Soldier's Life, long but brisk, sympathetic but not  adoring, rigorous but never tedious, is a commendable biography.--H.  O'Billovich