His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life​

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.

“His Very Best” is a fascinating book, and Alter tells Carter’s life story beautifully and with admirable fairness — he treats Carter as a real person, as flawed as anyone else, and not as a saint.

Alter’s pacing is wonderful; his accounts of some of the more dramatic events in Carter’s presidency are thrillingly told, but this never comes at the cost of the humanity of the people involved.

It’s a book that’s bound to fascinate anyone with an interest in American history, and an excellent look at the man whom Alter considers, justifiably, ‘perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history.’”

-NPR

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.

                                                             READ: Thirty Little-known Facts about Jimmy Carter

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 twenty-first.

Drawing on fresh archival material and five years of extensive access to Carter and his entire family, Alter traces how he 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 engrossing, monumental biography will change our understanding of perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history.

“Splendid… Alter’s account is ably sourced and fluidly written, one of the best in a celebrated genre of presidential biography.”

“Jonathan Alter’s important, fair-minded, highly readable contribution provides not just an authoritative introduction to Carter’s feats and failures but also insight into why a man of such intelligence, drive and noble intentions floundered in the White House as haplessly as he did.”

“His Very Best is a fascinating book, and Alter tells Carter’s life story beautifully and with admirable fairness — he treats Carter as a real person, as flawed as anyone else, and not as a saint.

Alter’s pacing is wonderful; his accounts of some of the more dramatic events in Carter’s presidency are thrillingly told, but this never comes at the cost of the humanity of the people involved.

It’s a book that’s bound to fascinate anyone with an interest in American history, and an excellent look at the man whom Alter considers, justifiably, ‘perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history.'”

“Alter is a talented storyteller, and his lively narrative captures Carter’s full arc from Georgia farm to White House and beyond.

Alter notes Carter’s travels to more than 140 countries on his humanitarian pursuits, as he refused to accept the above-it-all code of the ex-presidents club, and concludes that ‘Carter is a driven engineer laboring to free the humanist within.’ “

“Alter presents a superb historical assessment of Carter’s life that is more comprehensive than Peter Bourne’s Jimmy Carter and Stuart Eizenstat’s President Carter.”

“…contending that Carter is ‘perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history,’ Alter sheds light on his rise from Georgia farm boy to naval nuclear engineer in the early days of atomic submarines, innovative peanut producer, governor of Georgia, and unlikely presidential candidate…”

“Students of recent presidential and world history will find Alter’s anecdotally rich narrative immensely rewarding.”

“Over 40 years after he left office, when he was replaced by Ronald Reagan, Carter remains an underrated and undervalued president. Alter doesn’t skimp on Carter’s shortcomings, from his sometimes rigid thinking to a nastiness that could be unleashed; the Iran-hostage debacle is also detailed in full. But using interviews with Carter and many of his associates and family members, he also makes the case, without being heavy-handed, that Carter was ahead of the curve on the ecology, voting rights, and other issues that remain frustratingly unfulfilled. “

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