Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower's Campaign for Peace

Offering a day-by-day accounting of the international crisis over the Suez Canal in 1956, this latest work by Tunzelmann (Indian Summer) explains the canal's profound importance and consequence for Egypt, Israel, England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Arguably, the most significant part of this gripping tale is the role of President Dwight Eisenhower although other pivotal actors are critically analyzed: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Eisenhower, soon to face his 1956 reelection campaign, clearly relished the historical linkage with the likes of Great Britain and France, yet desired no war, conventional or nuclear, to assist those nations in either maintaining or expanding their respective empires. At the hands of Tunzelmann, Eisenhower is portrayed as the most levelheaded of the leaders, while Eden is cast in a more negative light. Readers will realize global actors don't solve problems so much as they do their best to cope with them.