President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not keep a sustained daily journal, but when the spirit moved him and there was time, he wrote memoranda to himself on issues of public policy and his own political attitudes. Although lacking the pungency of Truman's diaries, the material constitutes a readable portrait of a self-consciously principled man, together with some details useful for the historian of mid-century America. Much of the book deals with how Eisenhower persuaded himself that it was his duty to seek the presidency.