Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.4 | The History Cooperative

The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War. By David L. Snead. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. x, 286 pp. Cloth, $39.95, isbn 0-8142-0805-3. Paper, $19.95, isbn 0-8142-5005-X.)

The scholarly consensus on Dwight D. Eisenhower has come to rest pretty much where pendulums usually do—in this case between the know-nothingness (Eisenhower's) of contemporary criticism and the Machiavellian manipulation of the extreme Eisenhower revisionists of the early 1980s. David L. Snead gives the pendulum a gentle push in the latter direction but saves most of his strength for other issues. 1

In particular he examines the activities of the Gaither Committee, the high-powered, top-secret panel that left most observers at the time torn between two alternatives: whether Eisenhower was stupider for summoning it in the first place or blinder for ignoring and attempting to suppress its findings. Much of Snead's story is straightforward bureaucratic history. He profiles the members, follows their debates, assesses their findings. The ground has not been trod by others with quite such care—and only partly because it is so dry. Many of Snead's sources became available just recently, and he employs them to good effect. . . .

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