His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

Product Information

His first universe was Plains, named for the Plains of Dura, the land near Babylon in the Book of Daniel where ancient Israelites refused to bow down to idols. Though the narrative does occasionally put the reader “in the room,” rarely does it employ colorful scene-setting to add vibrancy to the story. His vice president, Walter Mondale, who was thinking of resigning, told a colleague: ‘It went from sugar to shit right there.

Let me say it from the get-go: His Very Best is just about everything I want and hope for in a big presidential biography. Mo Udall, much more acceptable to labor, would have won New Jersey, Connecticut, Iowa and Illinois for sure, while holding Missouri and West Virginia. He invited more African heads of state to the White House in his first year than any of his predecessors had in four.That off-ramp put us on a boulevard of broken dreams, where we are stuck gaping at the trappings and distractions of our consumerist, me-first society, wishing we could find a way to turn around and find an on-ramp to put us back on course. He didn't really listen to his advisors and was one of those guys who thought that if he was going it alone on an issue, he must be right.

And Alter quotes extensively from Jimmy’s love letters to his wife, Rosalynn, during his Navy years — including intimacies seldom entrusted to a biographer while the subjects are still alive.While this was broadly true, and the tension therein forged his character, his mother was a progressive on race mostly in comparison to her neighbors. To me, that speaks volumes about the man, more than any political or humanitarian accomplishments or Nobel Prize. farmer, submarine officer, humanitarian, Nobel Peace prize winner, Sunday School teacher, …the guy accomplished more in his 90s than I have my whole life! When Rosalynn grew despondent about the headlines, Jimmy told her to read from John 14:1 (“Let not your heart be troubled”), and her spirits lifted before she embarked on a diplomatic mission to Peru.