Dwight D. Eisenhower’s memoirs came out while I was in graduate school in the 1960s, and one of my professors commented — not entirely facetiously — that he’d been surprised to see print on the pages. My fellow students and I were being taught that despite Eisenhower’s victories in World War II, the presidency had been beyond his capabilities. Like Ulysses S. Grant, the last general to make it to the White House, Ike won elections easily, but did not rise to the responsibilities these thrust upon him.