Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World

Evan Thomas. The beatification of President Dwight Eisenhower continues in this keen character study. Often viewed as trustworthy but bland, Eisenhower didn't let on what was really roiling behind the comforting exterior, as Thomas effectively argues in this chronological look at his presidency. Thomas ably demonstrates how operating through indirection became Ike's effective peacekeeping strategy. An astute, thoroughly engaging portrayal.--Kirkus

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Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying: The Secret World War II Transcripts of German POWs

Sonke Neitzel. A trove of transcripts of bugged recordings providing specific, startling evidence that German soldiers in World War II were not just following orders. Neitzel and Welzer pore over two stores of documents from the British and American national archives, numbering some 150,000 pages in all, of transcripts from recordings of German prisoners of war secretly made in various holding facilities. The authors layer on commentary that sometimes threatens to bury the soldiers' stories in a gray cloak of academese, but the point remains: These German soldiers were utterly normal, for all the atrocities they committed, men who killed simply "because it's their job." Unique--and essential to any understanding of German mentalites in the Hitler era.--Kirkus

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Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union

Louis P. Masur. There have been many recent fine books on the Emancipation Proclamation and its role in recasting the character of the country. Masur does not engage that literature so much as extend it with a lucid and learned account of the process whereby Lincoln moved toward emancipation, and once so committed, made it the lodestar of the Union. This is now the best work on the proclamation. As its sesquicentennial looms (January 2013), all persons wanting to understand the contingency of freedom should read this book.--Library Journal

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Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country--And Why They Can't Make Peace

Patrick Tyler. A scathing look at the belligerent mindset of Israel's elite, from David Ben-Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu. Since its founding in opposition to Arab hostility, Israel remains "in thrall of an original martial impulse," writes former Washington Post and New York Times journalist Tyler. Tyler ably demonstrates how a culture of preemptive warfare and covert subversion is isolating Israel and alienating it from its founding as a progressive and humanistic state.

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