Two PERIODS OF Dwight Eisenhower's life shaped the twentieth century. He served as Republican president between 1952 and 1960, cohnting a series of international and domestic crises. In October 1957 Eisenhower took the momentous decision to deploy federal troops in Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the US Supreme Court's decision to desegregate American schools, a step resisted by the state's governor, Orval Faubus. This decision had great significance. It demonstrated the capacity of the federal government to override local opposition to desegregation and confirmed that the United States was on the road to reforming civil rights for African-Americans.

Eisenhower's other role in modern history was as a military hero who monumentally changed the course of the Second World War through his steeliness, strategic planning and leadership. The images captured on newsreel of General Eisenhower walking with General Patton, in the spring of 1945, through the liberated Nazi death