Review
"Mitchell is truly pioneering in her effort to include a multitude of African, Latin American, European and even Australian sources in the story of the diplomacy of this period. She also does an excellent job of integrating within her narrative America's domestic racial politics, and their effects on men like Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young. Jimmy Carter in Africa will certainly compel historians to reassess Carter's diplomacy and to recognize both his significant achievements and failures on the African continent." -- Thomas Schwartz, Vanderbilt University
"The width and depth of her research is a model that diplomatic historians should aspire to achieve, her writing flows, and she places Carter's Africa policy within the larger context of US foreign policy and politics." -- Robert Anthony Waters Jr., International Journal
"Jimmy Carter in Africa manages to be many books at once. It is a much-needed assessment of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. It is a multi-archival exploration of an under-researched area of the Cold War. It is also an excellent sketch of the intersection of race and politics in American decision-making. Finally, it is a worthy attempt at understanding the inner workings of Jimmy Carter himself." -- Louise Woodroofe, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, H-Diplo Roundtable
"Mitchell writes clearly in sweeping away historical judgments she sees as myths, most prominently concerning Jimmy Carter (always a Cold Warrior, in Mitchell's formulation) and his principal advisers. On these questions, her concluding chapter is especially strong. An impressive historical work in every respect." Recommendation: Essential―D. N. Buckaloo, Choice
"Your extraordinary research has resulted in a truly definitive account of one of the most challenging and important aspects of my presidency." -- Jimmy Carter, Former President of the United States
"Nancy Mitchell's Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race in the Cold War is a phenomenal addition to the scholarship of the Cold War. Drawing heavily on archival research conducted in the United States, Britain, and South Africa and on documents from Cuba and Zimbabwe, the book presents an in-depth and engaging international history of President Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. Mitchell does a commendable job of providing context, ensuring that the book is readily accessible regardless of a reader's expertise. It is an essential and enjoyable read for any historian interested in the late Cold War or modern Africa." -- Benjamin Griffin, H-War
"The volume's arguments and overall importance can not only change our views of Jimmy Carter's foreign policies and the domestic and foreign pressures he overcame to formulate those policies, but also force us to rethink critical parts of US relations with Africa amidst the historic racial and civil rights events of the 1970s." -- Walter LaFeber, Cornell University
"Nancy Mitchell's exhaustive study of Jimmy Carter's Africa policies (1977–1981) is based on a vast array of once classified and other archival material augmented by many interviews with those directly involved, including with the 39th president of the US. The result is a wealth of fresh insights into the complexity and importance of this critical period in Africa's history, and of how Carter's leadership strengths, talents and core values were tested to good effect." -- John Stremlau, South African Journal of International Affairs
"The Cold War in Africa has received much less attention than the Cold War in Europe and the Middle East, and Nancy Mitchell has made a significant contribution to rectify this. I am sure that Jimmy Carter in Africa will become the standard work for the Cold War in Rhodesia and Ethiopia/Somalia in the 1970s. This book is an outstanding achievement." -- Klaus Larres, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
"The research for this book is staggering. It is a model of multiarchival research in many disparate collections in the United States as well as in the archives of numerous other countries. This book will give us a new and much more textured, balanced, and thoughtful portrait of Jimmy Carter as a president and of the foreign policy of his administration." -- Melvyn P. Leffler, University of Virginia
About the Author
Nancy Mitchell is Professor of History at North Carolina State University.
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