Michael Korda misses the point about American heroes, thinking we pester them in to infamy or insignificance.

In his new biography of Dwight Eisenhower, he quote s Emerson's comment, "Every hero becomes a bore at last," noting, by way of cont rast, France's "national passion for Napoleon," England's "sentimental hero wors hip of Nelson," and Russia's "glorification of Peter the Great." But if we cut o ur heroes "down to size," as Mr. Korda contends, we do so only to build them bac k up again. Hence David McCullough's sanctification of Truman and now, in the sa me tradition, Mr. Korda's "Ike: An American Hero." The title is positively antique a throwback to 19th-century American biographical tradition, in which the hero's early years are rendered in the soft sepia of nos talgia and his command decisions related boldly so as to stand out against his l esser contemporaries. If Mr. Korda breaks no new ground and is rather timid when it comes to describin g Eisenhower the man, he is sound on Eisenhower's role as Supreme Commander. The biographer presents a powerful picture of a soldier gifted at inspiring and tra ining his troops but just as savvy in dealing with world-class politicians and p rima donnas such as Winston Churchill, Bernard Montgomery, and George Patton. Th e latter two often derided Ike as weak because he did not check their insubordin ate behavior, but Ike tolerated their guff only so long as they adhered to his s trategy of destroying the German war machine. To bolster the prestige of Britain, a world power on the wane, Churchill wanted to take Berlin before the Soviets arrived, but Eisenhower resisted this politica l ploy. Patton and Montgomery wanted Berlin for their own glory. But in March 19 45, the Soviets were only 35 miles from the German capital, while Patton and Mon tgomery were 200 miles away. Eisenhower was given estimates that taking Berlin ( which had no strategic value) would cost 100,000 American lives. In the event, t he Soviets lost something like 360,000 soldiers taking the German capital, accor ding to John Wukovitsin"Eisenhower"(2006). What is more, with the atomic bomb as yet unexploded, Eisenhower knew Roosevelt counted on Soviet help with the invas ion of Japan. To grab Berlin, especially after the Yalta agreement had ratified the city as part of the Soviet occupation zone, would have accelerated the Cold War, even if it did not provoke an immediate crisis on the Allied side. Ike was such a strong wartime leader, Mr. Korda suggests, that he does not have to earn our respect again on the home front, does not, for example, have to deno unce baddies like Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower did not want to get "in the gutter with that guy," he writes. How would a strong public defense of George Marshall , Eisenhower's mentor, have been a brand of gutter politics? Yet Eisenhower, to the chagrin of many friends, failed to support Marshall, one of the towering fig ures of the century. Similarly, Eisenhower's inaction on civil rights receives a pass from Mr. Korda. As president, Eisenhower reacted to the unanimous Supreme Court decision on Bro wn v. Board of Education with dismay, later voicing his deep regret that he had nominated chief justice Earl Warren to the court at all. Eisenhower believed tha t outlawing segregation went too far, and would have preferred a decision that s imply affirmed equality of opportunity. But as Warren demonstrated to even the m ost conservative of the justices, separate but equal was a contradiction in term s. The true hero of the saga was Earl Warren. Although Eisenhower's record of enforcing desegregation in the military was stro ng, and although he did enforce the Supreme Court integration decision when he s ent troops to Little Rock, he was in his actions affirming the authority of the federal government, not making a moral statement about civil rights. In this, he simply did not act heroically. A hero is not only courageous, he must be farsig hted. Eisenhower, devoid of a moral imagination, hoped instead to maintain the s tatus quo.

After powerful Eisenhower biographies by Stephen Ambrose and Carlo D'Este, it wo uld seem incumbent on Mr. Korda to provide a fresh assessment of the man. I thou ght that perhaps he might achieve a breakthrough in his treatment of Kay Summers by, Eisenhower's driver, social secretary, and companion during the war. After a ll, Mr. Korda published her memoir, "Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower" (1975). Instead, the biographer retreats to the safe "nobody kno ws and prurient speculation is out of place." Ike's wife, Mamie, suspected him, and friends generally assumed Kay was his mist ress. (Mr. Korda even speculates that Ike's letters to Kay "are not those that a general would normally write to a driver.") Kay wrote about Ike with insight an d sensitivity in her memoir, which she wrote while dying of cancer in the 1970s. What is it that Mr. Korda needs at this point? A photograph of them in bed? The biographer's reticence obfuscates the crucial role this woman performed in Ike' s life. In the end, Mr. Korda's "Ike" differs little from previous accounts that have steadily increased Eisenhower's stature as a self-effacing man who neverth eless made a powerful mark on history.