At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends

Overview

Published in 1967, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends offers Dwight D. Eisenhower’s plainspoken reminiscences in a relaxed, anecdotal voice. Rather than a chronological, policy-dense memoir, it moves conversationally through episodes that shaped his character and judgment, from small-town boyhood to Supreme Allied Commander and beyond. The focus falls on people, places, and lessons learned, delivered with a front-porch warmth that favors stories over score-settling.

Roots and Formation

Eisenhower begins in Abilene, Kansas, evoking a childhood of thrift, duty, and community pride. He returns repeatedly to the habits that stuck: respect for craft, a distrust of pretense, and belief in teamwork. West Point enters not as a catalog of courses but as a crucible for discipline, humor, and resilience; he recalls pranks, injuries, and the quiet grind that turned classmates into lifelong comrades. Early Army service is presented as apprenticeship. He dwells on mentors, notably Fox Conner in Panama, who drilled him in history, coalition warfare, and the art of clear orders. The First World War passed him stateside, but he found purpose training tank crews at Camp Colt in Gettysburg, where he learned logistics, improvisation, and responsibility for men under pressure.

Rising to High Command

The narrative tilts to World War II without fanfare, emphasizing unlikely leaps shaped by timing and preparation. Summoned by George C. Marshall, he steps into the maelstrom of coalition planning for North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, and then the great gamble of Normandy. The portraits of colleagues, Marshall, Bradley, Patton, Montgomery, Churchill, and de Gaulle, are deft, wary, and generous. Eisenhower dwells less on battlefield maneuvers than on the work of holding a sprawling alliance together: smoothing egos, translating cultures, and insisting on unity of effort. He admits to doubts and fatigue, and he lingers on the weight of authorizing the D-Day assault, including the private note he drafted accepting sole responsibility if it failed. Short field visits and encounters with enlisted soldiers punctuate the story, culminating in his stark impression of liberated camps and his determination to preserve evidence of Nazi crimes.

Public Life After War

Postwar chapters keep the same relaxed tempo. Columbia University appears as an awkward fit, a civilian interlude that underscored his preference for organizations with clear missions. As NATO’s first Supreme Allied Commander, he found familiar challenges in coalition building, now reframed by the Cold War. The presidential years surface through human vignettes rather than policy debate: staff dynamics, the pressure of crises, the value of honest counsel, and the relief found in small rituals, golf, painting, the farm at Gettysburg. He steers away from partisanship and dwells on the character and competence of those around him.

Themes and Voice

Threaded through these stories is a leadership ethic built on preparation, steady temperament, and sharing credit. He returns to the idea that decisions ripen through patient planning and that clarity in purpose helps subordinates act boldly. Humor oils the gears; humility keeps perspective. The tone is grateful rather than triumphant, stressing the debt owed to teachers, sergeants, staff officers, and citizen-soldiers who carried burdens without fanfare.

Portrait of the Man

At Ease ultimately sketches Eisenhower as a practical romantic: skeptical of grandstanding yet moved by the durability of democratic institutions and the decency of ordinary people. The book’s informality is intentional, bringing history down to earth and revealing how large events looked from the inside, complicated, collaborative, and human. It is a companionable coda to a public life, offering readers not a defense of decisions but a collection of moments that, taken together, explain how a boy from Abilene learned to keep an alliance steady and a nation calm.