Jonathan Jordan had carved out a significant niche for himself as an author and book critic when he came up with a new book idea that took a longer gestation period than he had in mind.
As an attorney with the prominent Atlanta law firm King and Spalding, Jordan has done his literary work on the side. But three previous volumes of military history also gained him a national audience, and eventually regular assignments reviewing history books for The Wall Street Journal.
Eight years after deciding to explore the friendship between Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill, Jordan recently published “Ike and Winston,” which starts during the key European campaigns of World War II and continues through the tensions of the early Cold War years.
It’s a project that falls within familiar terrain for Jordan (author website), who has published two other books about military strategy during World War II, and provides a familiar background for readers of that conflict.
The famous American general-turned-president and legendary British prime minister were very different figures, with sharply contrasting personalities.
After plumbing the archival works of both subjects, Jordan tells a fresh story about how Eisenhower (famously nicknamed “Ike”) and Churchill maintained their personal affinity for one another, even when they had major differences over the decades.
“These are the most fun characters I’ve researched,” said Jordan, who visited Churchill’s archives at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, and Eisenhower’s presidential library in Kansas.
“It’s purely a relationship story.”
Jordan, who had a recent book signing at the Barnes and Noble at Avenue East Cobb, said he wanted to explore in detail how that relationship changed as Eisenhower got into politics, and as the Democratic West turned its focus from defeating Hitler to contending with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Jordan likens them to Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, among other colorful analogies.
Eisenhower was an expert bridge player, whose no-drama Midwestern persona belied “a calculating eye,” Jordan says.
He understood the politics that Churchill, and while frustrated with those considerations, patiently navigating some delicate international sentiments beyond the battlefield.
By the time Eisenhower was first elected president in 1952, Churchill was no longer the British Prime Minister. But he served a vital role as the two nations took on Soviet Communism in the 1950s.
Even as Eisenhower was plotting the invasion of Normandy in 1944 to flush out the Germans, Churchill was leery of Stalin and his post-war plans, and famously gave an “Iron Curtain” speech warning of those dangers in 1951.
Jordan develops that storyline as D-Day moved on to the the Battle of the Bulge and beyond, to the Nazi surrender in 1945.
Churchill was presiding over a fading British empire and stressed detente with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower occupied the White House as the American post-war empire was riding high, and believed in a policy of deterrence.
Those dynamics propel “Ike and Winston” through nearly 500 pages of sweeping global history, from wars in Korea and Vietnam to the crisis at the Suez Canal and in the Iron Curtain nations of Eastern Europe in the 1950s.
After World War II, Eisenhower and Churchill “disagreed about a lot, but they never let that bond break,” Jordan said.
He said many of those storylines have some relevance today, as the post-war alliances between the U.S. and Europe are under stress, and as China emerges as the primary threat to American power.
An Iranian revolution in the 1950s prefigures today’s attacks by the U.S. and Israel there, and an anti-Communist uprising in Budapest 70 years ago resonates during a recent eventful election in Hungary.
“Ike and Winston” traces how that history remains connected.
“They really have shaped the world we have lived in,” Jordan said of Eisenhower and Churchill.
Jordan finished the manuscript for “Ike and Winston” shortly before he accepted an appointment last fall as a federal bankruptcy judge in Atlanta.
The book also was put on hold as he worked on another book with his daughter, Walton High School graduate Emily Anne, called “The War Queens.”
The book project was hers, as she was still in high school, and examines how female leaders guided their countries during wartime. The key figures include Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir.
“She was talking about wanting a good subject for a book, and that was: Can a woman make decisions as national leaders the way men do?” he said.
Jordan is already plotting his next book, but it’s early in the process. He admits he’s still getting used to life as a judge, but wants to stay with global affairs during the Cold War, focusing on smaller conflicts.
Building on his enjoyment writing “Ike and Winston,” Jordan would say only that the story will be told through the individuals whose leadership defined those times.
“I really do like focusing on characters,” he aid.
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