This project has gathered firsthand testimony from those who played major roles in the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961), as well as the recollections of observers and of those knowledgeable about special aspects. In addition to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and members of his family, the list of participants below includes members of the White House staff, cabinet members, political advisers, members of Congress, administrators, scientists, journalists, ambassadors, military and civilian specialists, and others in a position to testify about trends and events of the period.

Among topics well documented are the Republican conventions and campaigns of 1952 and 1956, the functioning of White House advisers and staff, the President's relations with his cabinet, the functioning of the Bureau of the Budget and various independent agencies, relations with the press, scientific developments, and other special aspects too numerous to mention, the whole interlaced with anecdotes about major and minor episodes in public life in the 1950s. A series of interviews done in Little Rock, Arkansas, on the school integration crisis there is of particular interest.

In addition to memoirs done under Columbia's aegis, the series includes twelve donated by Professor Herbert S. Parmet, who conducted them in preparing his Eisenhower and the American Crusades (Macmillan, 1972), and sixty-eight thus far acquired from the Eisenhower Library through an exchange agreement whereby both institutions share oral history transcripts about Eisenhower, his family, career and administration, under identical restrictions. These acquisitions explain the fact that, in the listing that follows, some names are repeated with different page numbers (and in some instances different restrictions) after each.