His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

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He and Rossalyn have a very good marriage, but they went through some rough patches, mostly caused by Jimmy’s obstinacy. He's pretty much our only legitimate evangelical Christian president ever, and yet he was a Democrat, and, for the state of Georgia, a liberal one. Could any other American president have stayed awake to read the book, much less answer the questions to the senator’s satisfaction? Perlstein is the pre-eminent chronicler of America’s conservative turn and my only caveat is that the casual reader might want to read his earlier books first to understand fully what’s going on. This leaves the reader confused and bewildered, wondering why the author would feel the need to evoke the current president when it wasn't relevant.

He taught Sunday school and He started Habitat for Humanity to help build affordable housing ownership for all and he often was one of the many volunteers who built the houses. 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. He could be cocky at times and so sure of the righteousness of his ideas that he didn't always counsel well with others. Alter’s account is ably sourced and fluidly written, one of the best in a celebrated genre of presidential biography.He has the ability to reach for the best in that person—an almost magical power to inspire someone by telling them, ‘You can make history. This included being dodgy in his private and public position on segregation and the Black civil rights movement.

The author makes a compelling argument that the 39th Presidents one term was far more consequential and successful than until recently people were willing or able to admit. In winter, it was surprisingly cold, and the boy's most unpleasant childhood memories were of shivering all night, even under blankets.But they were well-to-do by local standards and boasted a telephone (on a shared "party line" with two other families and an operator, Miss Gladys, who knew everyone's business), automobiles (a Plymouth and later a pickup truck), and a large battery-powered radio, shaped like a cathedral, which everyone sat and stared at while the voices of Little Orphan Annie, Amos 'n' Andy, Jack Benny, Glenn Miller, and Franklin D. Because no two presidents in the history of the republic are more unalike in character and temperament than this pair.

One of the few Democrats who did get on with him was Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, who, Perlstein notes with distaste, also championed tax cuts and mandatory sentencing. There is little fault to find in this biography, but there are a few areas where readers may feel somewhat short-changed. In the lives of even those presidents who falter, after all there is drama and significance, pathos and inspiration — and a welter of experiences that are worth understanding if for no other reason than that they altered the course of our nation. The music that he played in the Oval Office, and in his study just off the Oval Office, was mostly classical.Jonathan Alter has done his very best with the first cradle-to-present biography of a modern president best known for gas station lines, captives in the desert, and his life as an ex-president. In 1978, the shah’s health began failing, and Khomeini’s supporters launched violent protests to demand the shah’s removal. His term in office was fraught with a number of economic challenges, as well as the Iran Hostage Crisis. It wasn’t until his mother died that he stated he was raised by Rachel Clark, whom he barely made mention of while his mother was alive. In the history of the United States there have only been 16 years when this country has not been in a military engagement somewhere in the world.

He described it as “the difficulty comes when you try to love someone right in front of you–on the elevator, across the desk from you, whom you might be inclined to hate.

It snowed in California and ‘fifty-two whales simultaneously stranded themselves on a Mexican beach’. Furthermore, if those who decide the allocations of the real and unreal are cruel, mad or colossally wrong, what then?