Liking Ike

David Haven Blake's Liking Ike is an outstanding contribution to the growing literature exploring the intimate links between Hollywood and politics. His lively narrative reveals how during the early 1950s, movie stars and advertising agencies recognized the importance of television and worked with Dwight Eisenhower to transform the ways in which candidates were sold to a mass audience of potential voters. -Steven Ross, author of Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics Liking Ike leavens the necessity of advertising with the buoyant yeast of celebrity when television was new. Blake's carefully researched and elegantly argued political history of celebrity's charming and disarming effects upon the American presidential campaign and the conduct of government arrives not a moment too soon. -William L. Bird, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Liking Ike has never been easier than in David Blake's fascinating account of the transformation of the heroic General Dwight David Eisenhower into Ike, the plain-spoken man from Abilene. Madison Avenue used television to mobilize voters by reassuring them that Eisenhower was someone they could relate to, and exposing the back room machinations of entrenched local Republicans. A good read for anyone interested in the intersection of media and politics. -Samuel L. Popkin, author of The Candidate: What It Takes to Win-And Hold-The White House