American politics is a sea of chaos these days. We face a formidable set of enemies abroad and discord at home. This time of upheaval is fostering two related but opposed reactions. On one hand, many Americans are turning toward cynicism. This group includes academics, pundits, and a new generation of elected leaders who reject the idea that the American story is a good one. Going beyond the great American tradition of critique for the sake of improvement, members of this tribe argue that the United States has failed. Prominent examples here include the antiracist movement, typified by Ibram X. Kendi on the left, and the post-liberalism movement, exemplified by Patrick Deneen, on the right. Both the left and right have increasingly influential voices that want to capture or dismantle institutions, rather than reform them. On the other hand are those seeking to dig below the ashes of our problems to build a better America. In this camp, are those who believe that the American tradition has something unique—and good—to offer, especially in times of great discord.

This divisive backdrop makes Michel Paradis’s The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower an important read for Americans today. On its face, the book offers an account of how Eisenhower’s military career took him from a West Point cadet to Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. On this count, Paradis does an excellent job. I have been reading and critiquing Eisenhower books for a decade now and this work stands out, both for its gripping prose and for the way Paradis sheds light on parts of Ike’s personality that other biographers usually ignore. The Eisenhower literature is vast, indeed, and it is difficult to make a truly new contribution to it. While this book is excellent, its most important feature is the portrayal of Eisenhower’s hopeful vision of America, despite the many reasons for pessimism during the 1940s.

In presenting us with Dwight Eisenhower, the man and the officer, this book invites the reader to a serious meditation on a quintessential example of a classically American figure. To understand Eisenhower, Paradis shows, is to understand both the type of figure American culture can produce and the type of leadership a contemporary democracy needs when it faces existential threats. This is no hagiography. The story here is not that Eisenhower was an indispensable man or that he could do no wrong. The Eisenhower presented here is neither the boring nor the angelic version of Ike that has so often been portrayed. The journey this book takes us on is one where a remarkable, but flawed person plays a particularly large role in the defining moment of America’s rise to global power.

Importance of Democratic Ideals for the Citizen

One of Eisenhower’s most striking traits, as a general, was his obsession with connecting American ideals with the realities of a total and industrialized war. Throughout his wartime diaries and his first memoir, Crusade in Europe, he spoke often of the moral importance of the war. His view was not just that Nazism was evil, though he did hold that conviction. More deeply, he believed that the American cause was important for the world. The United States represented the most ambitious commitment to human freedom ever undertaken and, consequently, it was America’s natural place to lead a multi-national coalition force to defeat one of the evilest regimes ever to take power in the modern world.

While I have never doubted Eisenhower’s commitment to this vision of the war, Paradis adds important details that show how Eisenhower believed that the dispersion of this view was key to actually winning the war. Months before D-Day, Eisenhower sent an officer to go undercover, posing as a private, with the mission of inspecting conditions in the 1st Infantry Division, better known as The Big Red One. The captain reported back that a required seminar titled “The Nature of a Free Man” had not been properly absorbed by the rank and file. Eisenhower was particularly frustrated that the lofty ideas of the American project were not filtering down to his forces, in a pure enough way—he continued to emphasize the importance of philosophical contest at the heart of the war long after it was won.

The picture Paradis paints of Eisenhower at war shows us how to reckon with the awkward collision between hostile forces abroad and our own communal life at home. More deeply, we see Eisenhower worrying about the risks of American citizens taking the wrong lessons from our war effort. As early as the 1920s, when he was stationed in Panama and being mentored by Fox Conner, one of the army’s most serious intellectuals, Eisenhower began to devour works on strategy, history, and philosophy. Paradis shows that one of the most surprising lasting influences was the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche as presented in H. L. Mencken’s The Gist of Nietzsche. Eisenhower was particularly taken by Nietzsche’s view on democracy and warfare. When the general arrived in London to assume his duties as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he delivered a speech to be broadcast on newsreels across Britain and the United States. Paraphrasing the German philosopher, Eisenhower concluded with these lines:

I have complete confidence that the soldiers and airmen and all the civil populations of the United Nations will demonstrate once and for all that an aroused democracy is the most formidable fighting machine that can be devised.

Eisenhower was surely not a Nietzschean, but he took from Nietzsche a sense that the world often involves a zero-sum and unsentimental struggle between opposed visions of reality. He also took what Nietzsche meant as an invective against democracy and highlighted it as a strength of the Allied forces. For Eisenhower, the messiness of Western democracies did not hinder the Allied war effort. Instead, the unique way that democracies fight, once their people are awakened to an existential threat, gives them an advantage unique in the modern world. And yet, Eisenhower also gives us the more classically American response to the brutalities of war. Reflecting on D-Day, sometime in 1946, Eisenhower privately wrote, “War is a renunciation and a denial of human brotherhood.” For Ike, it was imperative to navigate the tension between fighting necessary wars and the cynicism that can come with that effort, even in success.

Eisenhower as Soldier and Man

Paradis is excellent at showing how Eisenhower developed throughout his career as a person and leader. Each chapter is named for a key figure in Eisenhower’s life. Often, these are mentors, such as Fox Connor or George Marshall. Other times these are contemporaries, such as Churchill or Patton. Sometimes Paradis chooses family members, such as his son John (who, interestingly, graduated from West Point on D-Day) and his wife Mamie. Woven through these chapters is also a chronological portrait of Eisenhower’s growth as a commander. We see, for instance, that Eisenhower learned patience and humility from Marshall. During the planning stages of D-Day, Marshall suggested that Eisenhower return home for a family visit in order to relax before the final push in Europe. Eisenhower wrote back that such a visit would not be possible due to the importance of his work in England. Marshall fired back with an order:

You will be under terrific strain from now on. I am interested that you are fully prepared to bear the strain and I am not interested in the usual rejoinder that you can take it. It is of vast importance that you be fresh mentally and you certainly will not be if you go straight from one great problem to another. Now come on home and see your wife and trust somebody else for twenty minutes in England.

Later, Eisenhower would emphasize the importance of sleep and rest for soldiers in combat theaters. He would also lionize Marshall in his postwar writings, in large part for demonstrating the combination of compassion and conviction that good leadership requires. Eisenhower strove to get the best out of the troops under his command and he did so with George Marshall’s example in mind.

We also get personal portraits that bring Eisenhower to life, in ways that previous books have failed to accomplish. Paradis provides a frank, but not salacious discussion about the discord between Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, regarding his close relationship with his younger female driver in England. Similarly, Paradis shows us the swings of rage and affection that Eisenhower shows for his old friend, Patton, and his son John, whom he adored but also demanded too much from at times. Altogether, Paradis takes the reader on an entertaining journey, with a mix of compelling narrative and historical context.

Sober Hope in Favor of Easy Cynicism

Today it is popular for politicians to project an airy hope, without bringing along the groundedness required to translate such hope into a better future. Vice President Kamala Harris likes to refer to herself as a “joyful warrior.” Early in his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously quipped, “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.” And yet, Americans of all political persuasions do not feel like they are winning. Nor are they likely to feel joyful about the nation’s challenges. Our current presidential contest is symbolic of this trend: a July Pew poll found that 60 percent of Americans “describe both Biden and Trump as embarrassing.”

Eisenhower’s hope in both the American project and the American people, however, was not naive. His commitment to the audacious American idea that free citizens can govern themselves and live prosperously was informed by his encounters with Nazism and Communism. More immediately, Eisenhower saw the horrors of total, industrialized war in a way that no previous American president had.

More importantly, Eisenhower paired his hope with prescription. Perhaps his greatest lesson is that when things look challenging for the United States and the world, we have a choice in how we respond. Resolve does not mean naivety, nor does a healthy civic pride mean dangerous nationalism. And yet, being committed to our national good means being willing to work for reforms, when they are needed. The uniqueness Eisenhower saw in the United States, the exceptionalism he bought into and worked to further was not one of a perfect America. Rather, it was of a society straining to move toward its best ideals, while infusing its communities with growing levels of decency and prosperity. His vision of the American dream had a commercial element, but it went much deeper to include spiritual freedom and psychological peace for ordinary citizens. The dignity of the regular person was paramount in Ike’s vision of America.

This window into Eisenhower’s thinking is something we ought to reflect on in this moment of international instability. The United States is not now at war, yet we are deeply involved in the biggest conflicts of the day. We are the most important ally of both Ukraine and Israel, as each fights large-scale wars that do not have clear ends in sight. In the Pacific, we are sparring, both rhetorically and in an increasing number of small-scale run-ins between our planes and naval vessels, with emboldened versions of China and North Korea. Paradis provides us not only with a compelling account of how Eisenhower navigated D-Day as a general, but how that experience shaped the man and president he would go on to become in the next decade. In our current uncertainties, Americans of all political persuasions stand to benefit from reading and reflecting on this book.