Customer Reviews

An Hour Before Daylight : Memories Of A Rural Boyhood

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I never really knew the president until I read the book. It provided insight and valuable understanding into the development of his ideals and lifelong commitment to community. Every night as I tucked my three darling sons into bed, we would cast aside Harry Potter for Hour Before Daylight. What a wonderful way to share our history with the family.

Had this engaging and conversational journey through President Carter's early days in Archer, Georgia been published prior to his '76 campaign, Americans would have understood better the thinking of the man they were to elect that year. Was his earnestness and honesty so surprising? This narrative strolls the reader through the gritty, but innocent, formative years of one of our country's most respected leaders.

A personal tribute to a place and the people that this man loves the most, the reader will find themselves enveloped in the minutiae of neighborhood scuttlebutt, hog slaughtering, Depression era agricultural economics, and of the (then) easy bigotry of the Deep South. The author lauds the passing of evils of the time and examines his own anxieties about the future of his family's generational farming heritage.

As a Georgian and as an American, I was delighted and entertained by President Carter's honesty and humor once again. Entertaining for all ages and a great introduction to rural life for young people. A fun & easy weekend read!

I couldn't put it down...What a remarkable life Jimmy Carter has led, and what rough times people had during the Depression. I really enjoyed other books by Jimmy Carter, but I think this one is my favorite. I'm very glad he became President of the U.S....he is a man of character.

"An Hour Before Daylight" is a fascinating view into the upbringing of one of America's most unlikely Presidents. Growing up in the rural south (is that an oxymoron for the 1930's south?) is about as far
removed from the beltway as anyplace I can imagine.

Carter presents to the reader that the values that he took to the presidency he acquired while growing up in a farm in central Georgia - mainly: hard work, personal responsibility, and an appreciation of diversity.

Yet, while the story itself is intriguing, the presentation is somewhat lacking. The book is repetative and the dialog is somewhat stilted. Carter makes the same points over and over and retells some of the same stories. One has the sense that Uncle Carter is telling us youngin's how it really was in them olden days while at the same time obviously pining for a time when the world seemed simpler.

Overall,. the tone of this book reminded me a lot of John Grisham's "A Painted House," a novel that I highly recommend.

I can't help wonder what some of the descendents of sharecroppers would think about Mr. Carter's book. It is evident that Mr. Carter is a decent and sincere man, embarrassed by the treatment of the black and less fortunate community in his time. His family was perhaps more caring and conscientious in their treatment of their sharecroppers than other families, but the system to keep the sharecroppers "in their place" was evidently firmly ensconced in their society. It would be interesting to look at the story from the sharecropper's perspective.

But the book is not intended to be from the sharecropper's perspective, and I am impressed by the candor and openness of our former President. I do not think the audio version is necessary to "hear" the story. The descriptions and tales of life in rural Georgia are portrayed with a remarkable reality. I could see it, feel it, and taste it-but that might have something to do with my memories as a child on a farm in southeastern Georgia.

Although the descriptions are fascinating and the stories are interesting, I rate Mr. Carter's memoir with a 3. The descriptive style is sometimes tedious and boring, and the stories are from a limited perspective. While Mr. Carter honestly acknowledges his own humanity and is open about personal failings, the tone frequently is pious and condescending. Perhaps that is what a memoir is...and is the reason I prefer biographies to autobiographies.

I've been wanting to read one or more of President Carter's books for a long time and decided to begin with this one. While I agree that it is well-executed in the main, it doesn't score higher with me on a few grounds.

One: I felt there was a need for more fastidious editing. The book was by no means too long, but there was repetition and disordered content.

Two: Way too much detail in some of the more mundane and unpleasant sections, in particular discussions of minutiae of small-town agribusiness dealings as well as graphic detail of livestock issues including slaughtering and castrating. TMI.

Three: This is a half-hearted complaint, for I realize this isn't the book where these matters would likely be discussed considering the author has several other memoirs addressing other periods of his life (doesn't he?) In any case, I felt like the President did not discuss enough how his upbringing resulted in his being the man he is today as far as race relations are concerned. Lots of discussion about the relatively tolerant household in which he was raised, but lots of apology at the same time about how racism was ubiquitous at the time and not really perceived by his family or by others as a wrong to be righted. I don't know, I guess I'm rambling here, but I would have liked to have read content along the lines of "and these boyhood experiences shaped my perceptions in such a way that I wanted to make a difference in my public service career" and also I woulda liked to have read about how he connects his religious beliefs with his liberal leanings. Flesh out that relationship a bit more.

Just my 2 cents.

In any event, the book was a quick read and I am very glad I got around to reading it.

This is the book that every baby boomer and Generation X-er should be required to read. Jimmy Carter provides a wonderfully vivid tale of southern rural depression life. The Carters and their neighbors were, by today's standard, fairly poor. They lived off the land, went barefoot most of the time, had no air conditioning and television. When they needed to go to town, most of the time their feet was the mode of transportation. As a child, the future president sold boiled peanuts on the streets of Plains, Ga,. He picked cotton, slaughtered hogs, milked cows, plowed fields, ate possum. In short, Jimmy Carter's early life was a hard one. Relatively speaking, however, the Carter's were wealthy, especially when compared to the destitute black sharecroppers and day workers who farmed their land.

Carter's beautifully written book should serve as a reminder to us all how easy it is to take life's 21st Century comforts for granted and how soft and privileged the American middle class really is. He helped me understand the world in which my father grew up and also made me proud of my country that someone with the humble beginnings of a Jimmy Carter could still be elected president.

This book is one of the best you'll read this year, guaranteed. It's a glimpse into the former President's youth, a life which was never easy, but never one that was complained about. Rather than writing a diatribe railing against growing up without having been born with the silver spoon found in so many of the other Presidents' mouths, Mr. Carter explores and celebrates the small trials he faced and which, eventually, molded him into the man who became President. "Angela's Ashes" as written from Georgia? Why not?

This book makes an outstanding gift, if only to yourself!

This is a book about Jimmy Carter's boyhood in rural Georgia during the years of the Great Depression, the entirety of which took place during the years of the first three Roosevelt administrations, although it is usually blamed upon Herbert Hoover, who preceded him in office.

I am a lifelong Republican, and rarely find anything to like about a prominent Democrat--particularly a Democrat president-- but I must admit to a strong liking for Jimmy Carter. He was, very apparently, a thoroughly decent man and it shows in this book. Perhaps I like him because his background is so similar to my own, although his was in rural Georgia--the son of a farmer--while mine was in Oregon--the son of a logger. And also the life he describes would not have been considered upper middle class in Oregon, as he suggest it was in Georgia, but rather lower down the scale.

His description of the details of life seems absolutely accurate, for the last generation to grow to adulthood without the benefits(?) of television.

One of the very interesting incidents he tells about is an uncle in the Navy who was stationed on Guam at the outbreak of the war, and was subsequently captured by the Japanese. His beautiful wife and two children left their home in San Francisco to stay with the Carters in Plains, where she received word that her husband had died in captivity. So, she returned to San Francisco where eventually she re-married.

But, her husband had not died, although he was half-starved and had lost 100 pounds.. After the war he returned home. When she discovered that he still lived, his wife immediately had her marriage annulled, but the Carter women persuaded him, in his diminished state, that she had committed adultery (by re-marrying) and so he divorced her. Carter tells the story without judgmental comment.

During the Depression we lived under similar conditions to those he describes: I've lived in houses without indoor plumbing or electricity, where we used the Sears & Roebuck catalog for toilet paper in the outhouse, as did he. We are of a similar age, and many of the conditions he describes were endemic in the United States at that time.

He describes one of the early moves of the Roosevelt administration-to plow under a quarter of the cotton crop, and kill and burn 200,000 young hogs (shoats) in order to raise prices, at a time when huge numbers of people were starving. His father, a Democrat, never forgave Roosevelt for that policy, and never again voted for him. Nor did he ever like the "New Deal." Mr. Carter also discusses other inequities and difficulties with the federal bureaucracy as it incrementally intruded into private citizens' lives, but, again, non-judgmentally.

But, mainly this book is not about politics. It is about a young boy, and young man, growing up in the rural South at a time before racial animosities were stirred up, but while a definite class system existed and the only class lower than the blacks in the South (where I also lived during that time) were the "poor white trash."

Jimmy Carter writes explicitly and, I'm sure, truthfully.

Joseph Pierre

In a memoir originally started as a remembrance for his grandchildren, President Carter recalls the story of his boyhood in Plains Georgia. His was a youth spent in a farming community during the period of the great depression of the 1930's and before civil rights legislation changed the social fabric of the nation. Carter states that the book was written "to understand and explain myself better, to recount interesting experiences, and perhaps to bring some perspective to our rapidly changing circumstances as we enter a new millennium."

There is no doubt that the circumstances of his youth had a profound effect on his attidtudes and his performance during his presidency, especially as it related to his stands on social programs. He confesses embarrassment about the treatment of his black neighbors by his family and others in a society in which those actions were the the norm of his time, and he makes it clear that his life and the life of his family was deeply rooted in the land and the customs of the area.

Written in an easily flowing and personal style, the book is an interesting insight into the roots of the thirty-ninth President of the United States. It is a very worthwhile read which led me to view President Carter in a new light.