His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

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Conventional wisdom holds that he was a genial failure whose defeat by Ronald Reagan was sealed by humiliations such as the Iran hostage crisis and his claim to have been attacked by a “vicious-looking, oversized swamp rabbit” while fishing.

His boyhood on the farm coincided almost exactly with the years of the Great Depression, when his family suffered along with the rest of the country. I remember a lot about those years: we got rid of our station wagon that carried the nine of us, and got two Hondas, and running those two cars was actually cheaper than running the station wagon.

His favorites growing up were Tom Swift books, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan books. He wasn’t prioritizing peace over human rights so much as saying the former was a prerequisite for the latter. He is the winner of numerous awards, including the National Headliner Award for his coverage of 9/11, the Gerald Loeb Award, and the Book Award from the New Jersey Council of the Humanities. Supporters were heartened when hawkish Democrat Tom McIntyre of New Hampshire decided to deliver an impassioned speech attacking “the bully boys of the radical Right.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I really don't care so long as the author keeps it straight and doesn't stray too far from a straightforward/objective biography. This “important, fair-minded, highly readable contribution” ( The New York Times Book Review ) will change our understanding of perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history. Newsweek senior editor Alter attempts to explore FDR's famous first ""hundred days"" in office, when the president laid the foundation for national recovery from the Great Depression.

Instead, he leveraged his status as a former head of state to further humanitarian causes around the world. So, even though he was sympathetic to the plight of African Americans, he did nothing during the Second Reconstruction of the south, which was in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Or when The Boston Globe mistakenly headlined an editorial about one of his speeches, “Mush From the Wimp”? Thomas Jefferson reflecting on his presidential tenure was quoted as saying that “I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single citizen was shed by the sword of war.

To him, that wasn't tough but, rather, a sign of insecurity, and he viewed the killer instinct that he lacked as a bogus prerequisite for good leadership. Could any other American president have stayed awake to read the book, much less answer the questions to the senator’s satisfaction? Among Rodney’s proudest possessions is a photo of himself with one of the church’s Sunday school teachers and keeper of the church grounds.History will judge him far more kindly, and this book and others, recent and forthcoming, herald that reassessment. Mo Udall, much more acceptable to labor, would have won New Jersey, Connecticut, Iowa and Illinois for sure, while holding Missouri and West Virginia.

percent of the six hundred thousand South Korean troops already defending the country—would jeopardize his national security. Suffering from cancer, the shah went into exile in January 1979 to seek medical treatment abroad while Khomeini amassed power in his country. Once he'd diagnosed the problem and figured out the solution, he couldn't help but get a one track mind about it. farmer, submarine officer, humanitarian, Nobel Peace prize winner, Sunday School teacher, …the guy accomplished more in his 90s than I have my whole life! I think he is misunderstood because people have overstressed his unpopularity and underemphasised his actual achievements as president.I put this book down many times because it was so detailed, that I felt the book could have used some editing.