Advising Ike
The Memoirs of Attorney General Herbert Brownell

In this volume, Herbert Brownell, the man Dwight D. Eisenhower said would make an outstanding president, recounts his achievements and trials as a presidential operative, serving during an administration that faced civil rights issues, the communist witch-hunt and an unpopular war in Korea.

Particularly difficult,but among the high points of the Eisenhower administration for Brownell, were the painstaking gains made in the area of civil rights. Despite personal attacks by the opposition on his integrity, he tenaciously supported and enforced the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown vs. Board of Education" and Little Rock desegregation. Going beyond the years he spent on Eisenhower's cabinet, Brownell describes the events and people that have influenced his colourful life, including those from his early years in Nebraska, his apprentice years in New York as he joined the opposition to Tammany Hall, his stints as chairman of the Republican party and manager of Thomas Dewey's two unsuccessful presidential campaigns, and his 62-year private law career. Brownell's memoirs, filled with history, anecdotes, personal observations and subtle humour, reveal a highly intelligent and modest man who achieved great accomplishments - developing the first civil rights act since Reconstruction, preserving national security while protecting individual rights - by doing what he thought was right, not by being politically correct.