His Very Best

Jimmy Carter, a Life

By: Jonathan Alter

Narrated by: Michael Boatman

From one of America’s most respected journalists and modern historians comes the highly acclaimed, “splendid” (The Washington Post) biography of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian.

Jonathan Alter tells the epic story of an enigmatic man of faith and his improbable journey from barefoot boy to global icon. Alter paints an intimate and surprising portrait of the only president since Thomas Jefferson who can fairly be called a Renaissance Man, a complex figure - ridiculed and later revered - with a piercing intelligence, prickly intensity, and biting wit beneath the patented smile. Here is a moral exemplar for our times, a flawed but underrated president of decency and vision who was committed to telling the truth to the American people.

Growing up in one of the meanest counties in the Jim Crow South, Carter is the only American president who essentially lived in three centuries: his early life on the farm in the 1920s without electricity or running water might as well have been in the nineteenth; his presidency put him at the center of major events in the twentieth; and his efforts on conflict resolution and global health set him on the cutting edge of the challenges of the 21st.

“One of the best in a celebrated genre of presidential biography,” (The Washington Post), His Very Best traces how Carter evolved from a timid, bookish child - raised mostly by a Black woman farmhand - into an ambitious naval nuclear engineer writing passionate, never-before-published love letters from sea to his wife and full partner, Rosalynn; a peanut farmer and civic leader whose guilt over staying silent during the civil rights movement and not confronting the white terrorism around him helped power his quest for racial justice at home and abroad; an obscure, born-again governor whose brilliant 1976 campaign demolished the racist wing of the Democratic Party and took him from zero percent to the presidency; a stubborn outsider who failed politically amid the bad economy of the 1970s and the seizure of American hostages in Iran but succeeded in engineering peace between Israel and Egypt, amassing a historic environmental record, moving the government from tokenism to diversity, setting a new global standard for human rights and normalizing relations with China among other unheralded and far-sighted achievements. After leaving office, Carter eradicated diseases, built houses for the poor, and taught Sunday school into his mid-nineties.

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.

©2020 Jonathan Alter. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Very enlightening

I am inspired to do more during my retirement. l spent my career in service to others. This book encouraged me not to give up. But, seek new ways to help and uplift others.

Jimmy Carter and climate change it could’ve occurred but didn’t because he was not reelected

Great book. I had never understood what a good man and wonderful president Jimmy Carter really was. What he accomplished for peace in the world, climate change, and the environment made him one of our better presidents. Had he been reelected I believe we would’ve had real action come on in I’m climate change a lot earlier

Fair, honest, thorough

Well written, objective, a pleasure to listen too. I throughly enjoyed the detail and narration

Excellent.

It's well past time that we should re-examine Jimmy Carter, and this book did a wonderful job. It peeled back the curtain not only on what the Carters presidency actually was, but also all of the factors that worked together to convince everybody that it was something else. I knew some good things about Carter going into this book, but (unlike almost any other politician), the more I actually learned about him, the more respect I gained. Now I am very much a Jimmy Carter fan.

(In all seriousness though, this book helps to illuminate a widely misunderstood period, and I would highly recommend reading it, even if you don't particularly like Carter).

Comprehensive and Compelling

I appreciated the depth, detail, and context of this biography of President Carter. I lived through his presidency and was aware he had been operating behind the scenes for the rest of his life, but I was missing the zoom in and zoom out that this provided.

I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to learn more about Carter’s remarkable character and life.

A great biography of an under appreciated President

A very good biography that highlights Carter’s accomplishments while also openly discussing his failures and shortcomings. Carter is a fascinating person - very human and unassuming even while incredibly accomplished and capable. You will likely learn more than you’d expect even if you lived through his presidency.

Interesting - Changed my opinion someday

A good reminder of the very significant steps Carter took that were obscured - in my mind, at least - by his inability to control the Iranian hostage crisis. I never really evaluated the importance of the Camp David accords, for example, or the importance of the Panama Canal treaty, and I had more or less forgotten Carter’s prescient concern with global warming. At times, however, the author seems a bit overenthusiastic, as when at the very beginning he suggests Vogel’s success in fighting inflation after Carter left office can be attributed in some measure to Carter.

Eye opening

If you were not yet a voter in 1976 this book is a thorough narrative to earlier generations of the Carter couple, their youth and marriage, careers and political impact from the 1950s through Jan 20, 1981 and most importantly their joint impact for humankind 1981 through today. Addressing Guinea Worm and River Blindness alone are more impactful than all Pat- post presidency activities added together. Having an “ avoidance of bullets flying” internal guide has led Carter to positively impact millions of lives in despot or dictator led countries worldwide and in the Middle East. I consider Carters impact looms larger than Sec of State roles in every Presidency since he left office in 1981 . Jimmy and Rossalyn Carter are both underrated in history..

Extremely well done

I’m a big history and biography fan but I was hesitant initially to purchase this book. I was unsure how much new info there was to learn about former President Carter (having previously read his autobiography and lives through the years he was in office and being a general fan). But I found this book gripping, extremely insightful, honest in giving a well rounded sense of Mr. Carter as a world leader, as an amazingly smart and driven and passionate person and a human being with flaws. The book was superbly performed as well. What resonated most was understanding more about the key world events during his time as president in the context of what we know now and what is happening now. We can see many areas where he was a visionary, some areas where it’s u clear whether his efforts helped or hindered, etc.

A New Hero

It is amazing how flaud Carter's cultural image is, how his political inexperience/nonobservance have completely undermined his saintly character and lifelong role as an active progressor of peace and human rights. His deeply informed and principled nature combined with his complete lack of specific ideology makes him seem especially relevant today, and as a 23-year-old, seemingly quite foreign compared to the current offerings of our modern political climate.

If I one day had the opportunity to vote for a candidate of Carter's sort, I just might find a renewed sense of hope for our future. After reading this book, I do already feel inspired to do more as a citizen, and as a member of my community. Thanks to the author for such an in-depth, balanced account of a great man!