In Podcast 2, we meet young David Dwight Eisenhower, who was later to become one of America’s most famous and well-respected presidents. We learn how the great success of Dwight Eisenhower’s grandfather psychologically doomed the future president’s father, after he proved a failure in business. We also learn how Eisenhower’s mother, a truly extraordinary figure in the lives of the six Eisenhower boys, compensated for their father’s shortcomings, both as a provider and as a parent. The podcast describes three pivotal events during Eisenhower’s childhood that years later still were sources of trauma and regret. And it gives us a picture of this Kansas boy at home and in school, at work and at play. It ends looking at Dwight David’s circuitous path to West Point, blasting the supposition that his path to the military academy was foreordained.

”Heroes with Humble Beginnings” also covers the traumatic early years of Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.