Customer Reviews

Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Post-Presidency

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Over the last several years I've read more than 35 presidential biographies, usually taking the advice of Amazon readers who have steered me toward the best available choices. While not among the very best of biographies, Bourne's effort is near or in the top ten presidential biographies.

Jimmy Carter is probably the most intelligent president of my lifetime, an extremely hard worker, ambitious, very religious and thoughtful about his religion but also willing to compromise his principles to get ahead. He is also stubborn and not willing to be shown up. He has usually viewed himself as an outsider, and while this helped convince Americans to elect him president, it did not prepare him to work well with Washington politicians and insiders to achieve many of his goals.

Along with describing Carter's life prior to the presidency, the first half is fascinating for its description of race and politics in the South during the 60's and 70's, laying out an outline of how to win the presidency through a grass roots campaign, the suspicion that Carters religious beliefs caused, and as a reminder of issues that campaigns focused on in the 70's (election ethics, environmental issues, education reform, national health insurance, and other populist sorts of themes) - the four year campaign for president is told in detail (150 pages), and in ways it seems overly long, but this is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Carter's life. The strategy and effort to elect an unknown governor to be president is pretty fascinating stuff.

I started to fear Bourne would run out of energy and pages to provide much detail about Carter's presidency. I was wrong. He captures the problems Carter and America faced, the often ineffective policy implementation of the Carter White House, and Carter's unwillingness to compromise or "play the game" with Congress. Carter's post-presidential years are cevered well.

Bourne has been a Carter advisor for nearly 30 years, but his book is balanced and thoughtful. He is not shy about criticizing Carter. Bourne writes well, and kept my interest throughout the narrative. In some ways the book appears to be published on the cheap. Double spacing between sections doesn't happen. There is no table of contents or chapter names. Despite these few limitations this is a highly recommended presidential biography.

Bourne shows how the the Carter family values and the values of the South shaped Jimmy and the impact that these values had on his presidency. His father's frugality and work ethic are manifest throughout Carter's life, while his mother's racial tolerance and kindness are as well. But his blind devotion to principle and weak managerial skills hindered relations with Washington power brokers and ultimately damaged his presidency.

Some of the most interesting reading is how Carter won the White House, coming from a complete unknown and total outsider to become the most powerful man in the world. And Bourne does an excellent job describing the election campaign. A surprising subtheme of the book is how some of the elements of the Reagan revolution were foreshadowed in Carter's policies, such as the emphasis on a strong defense and confronting the Soviets.

One weakness of the book is the author's hatred of the Reagan administration. He can hardly mention Reagan's name without calling him racist, a charge that is baseless as far as I know. He also assumes that the charges that Reagan interfered in the Iran hostage release in order to win the election are true without discussing the evidence. As far as I know, the evidence for this is controversial at best. Finally, the discussion of his administration could have been better organized--I could not determine if it was chronological or thematic.

The book reveals the complexity of Carter. Although he participated in Southern Baptist Home Mission Board outreach programs, he was either pro-choice or pro-abortion. Although he did more for blacks as governor of Georgia than any previous governor, he was also a supporter of the arch-segregationist George Wallace. Although he was willing to sacrifice almost anything for principle, he ran some awfully dirty campaigns for office in Georgia. Bourne is to be commended for not shying away from describing these complexities.

Bourne was the health advisor for part of the Carter administration, so this is definitely an insider view of his presidency. But Bourne does a good job describing all of Carter's life, from childhood to Navy service to Georgia politics to the presidency to post-presidency, ending with Carter's 70th birthday in 1994.

Overall, a good biography, although it inevitably suffers from being written by an insider and by the lack of historical distance from the main actor. But you will come to know Carter in his glories and his failings.

I walked through the isles of my public library looking for something to read. There was a large book with the words ' JIMMY CARTER' written on it that was sticking out of a shelf. I picked it up and decided to read it. This has been one of the best choices for reading I have ever made. Jimmy Carter is an extrodinary man, who's life is a lot more detailed and complex than I would have thought. This biography traces his life from birth, through the Navy, State Senatorial duties, Governorship and his Presidency. Jimmy Carter is shown as the admirable and honest man that he is. A real role model for all, Jimmy Carter is amazing, and so is this book.

Peter Bourne, a somewhat unknown member of the Carter White House, has written a relatively balanced biography of our 39th President. He admits his flaws (extreme stubborness and lack of political saavy), while stressing the religious values by which he tried to steer the country. His "spokes of a wheel" idea for running the executive branch, opposed by just about everyone who knew anything about the way the White House should be run, is an example of his flaws. His loyalty to the Middle East Peace process is an example of his values taking precedence over domestic political concerns.
Bourne, occasionally wears Carter "blinders" (as when he excuses the president's lack of knowledge of his brother's dealings with Libyan oil interests or when he attributes the failure of the hostage rescue mission solely to "bad luck and military ineptitude"), yet, on the whole, this is a worthwhile effort at detailing the man without the myth.

The preface starts off indicating the original idea for this book: as a campaign book and biography. So put on those rose-colored glasses and read about Jimmy in third-person. I don't like the posturing, this book reads like it was written to impress rather than give the reader a glimpse of who Jimmy is. Seems to me the author was too close to the president to offer an objective viewpoint. His early life is glossed over and it's just the 'character building' traits which are revealed. I thought Colin Powell's "My American Journey" and Anderson's "Che" did a much better job of revealing the person, and telling the story.

An odd part of this book was the long family history in the beginning. Maybe this was one facet Jimmy inserted, but it just went off on a long tangent.

I'm a Republican who nevertheless admired Jimmy Carter greatly, and I am saddened by his recent petulant rants agains President George W. Bush. He has every right to diagree with him but succumbing to the conspiracy theories of the wacko left is unseemly for a former President. Bourne needs to write a sequel.