Bret Baier - Three Days in January: Young Readers Edition: Dwight Eisenhowers Final Mission

I am very happy to bring you this book about President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his lasting importance to the life of the United States. As you read the inside story of his wisdom and heroism and learn about the significance of his final three days in office, I hope you see that it is not just an abstract tale of the past. History is a living thing, and we can find insight and inspiration from the leaders of previous eras.

Studying Eisenhowers life was a very rewarding experience for me. I was not alive during his presidency, but my interest in him developed over the years, especially after I visited the famous golf course in Augusta, Georgia, where Ike had a mini White House. It was filled with fascinating memorabilia, and I began to get very interested in this president I knew so little about.

Im the Fox News chief political anchor and host of Special Report with Bret Baier. As a journalist, Im naturally curious, and once I get interested in a topic I cant let it go. So I traveled to Abilene, Kansas, to visit the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home. It is a beautiful and even majestic setting, surrounded by fields of grain and alive with Eisenhowers historic contributionsfrom his commanding role in the Allied victory over Hitler to his decisive management of Cold War threats during the Soviet rise. The library and museum are built on the site of Ikes childhood home, which sits fully intact on its original lota typical modest turn-of-the-century house where you could pile in six or seven boys, with beds squeezed into every corner, while still leaving space for a piano.

The archivists at the library told me that if I wanted to learn more about Eisenhower, there were millions of pages of documents and hundreds of thousands of feet of original filmsome of it still unread and unseen. There was even a locked vault containing thousands of pages of material still classified after all these years. Now my reporters curiosity was really piqued. Although the library hosts some 200,000 visitors a year, coming from across America and around the world, most Americans will never physically visit the heartland site. I wanted to bring it to them.

Being at the presidential library has a strange effect. You start to feel as if youre standing in that time gone by. I work in television, which is a visual medium, so I could easily picture the scenesthe barefoot boy; the general, head in hands, preparing to make the critical decision about D-Day; the grinning candidate America liked (the slogan of his first presidential campaign was I Like Ike); the living room president, who spoke regularly on the small screen, glasses slipping down his nose; the confident commander in chief, standing toe to toe with Khrushchev. In particular, I could imagine the purposeful elder, preparing for his final mission in January 1961those crucial days that are the centerpiece of this book.

As I dug through the files, combed through the oral histories, listened to the tapes, and read the books about Eisenhowers presidency, one reality stood out for me: here was a man on a mission to save America, who largely succeeded in that endeavor. His was not the dramatic leadership of an era with bombs bursting in midair, but the wise course of a military strategist who rescued the world from that inevitability. He was a leader, in the truest sense of the word, and from my perch in the twenty-first century I was drawn to the question of what made him great.

The historian Jon Meacham made an observation that hit the mark. Referring to FDR and Churchill in Ken Burnss documentary series The Roosevelts, he said, One of the mysteries of history is why is it that certain moments produce exactly the right human beings? I came to see that Eisenhower, our thirty-fourth president, was such a man. He was the buried treasure of the past centuryhis influence underappreciated in the clamor of great individuals jockeying for recognition. And its all there to be found at the Eisenhower Library. I hope you get a chance to visit it one day, along with other presidential libraries, which tell our nations story in a vivid way.

I invite you to read this book and feel the pull of history. Imagine being there. Think about how youand we as a countrycan use the lessons of Ikes leadership in the present. Most of all, enjoy the read, and let history come alive for you.

Bret Baier

December 2019