The bitter feud between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax white Americans in the South into eventually accepting integration, while Warren, author of the Supreme Court’s historic unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, demanded immediate action to dismantle the segregation of the public school system. In EISENHOWSER VS. WARREN, James F. Simon examines the years of strife between them that led Eisenhower to say that his biggest mistake as president was appointing that “dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren.”

Although Franklin D. Roosevelt later called Chief Justice Hughes the best politician in the country, the two men fiercely collided at a pivotal moment in history --- during the initial stages of FDR’s New Deal.