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Of all former U.S. Presidents, Jimmy Carter was our most prolific author, a writer who never failed to surprise readers with his audacious range. From 1975 to 2018, Carter published 30 books, including multiple memoirs, a poetry collection, a White House diary, an outdoors journal, a children’s book, a Christmas story collection, and even a Revolutionary War novel.
As the longtime Peach Buzz columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I was often assigned to cover President Carter’s Atlanta book signings. He used to joke that only iconic AJC columnists Lewis Grizzard and Celestine Sibley could out-draw him at Oxford Books on Pharr Road—literary meet-and-greet spectacles, albeit with Secret Service agents carefully eyeing the long line of admirers snaking around the building. His only other chief competitor who generated similarly long autograph lines? His New York Times bestselling writer wife, Rosalynn.
Because of its endlessly fascinating insights into the Carters’ remarkable 76-year marriage, my favorite in Carter’s bibliography is their joint 1987 book Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life. However, neither the president nor the first lady shared my fondness for the tome. “Everything to Gain almost broke up our marriage!” Carter told me in 1995 when I broached the subject of a sequel during a book tour for his poetry collection Always a Reckoning. “We have separate computers, but each of us is a very severe editor for the other. We’ll never write anything else together though. We get along fine as long as we know which one of us is the boss—the author. We only communicated through computer messages for a while during the writing of Everything to Gain.”
Like any other author, the president had to suffer the slings and arrows of book critics. While promoting his book of poetry, Carter told me he had learned to take such criticisms in stride. “I’ve been expecting some bad reviews,” he quipped. “I’ve had bad reviews as a politician. I think I can roll with the punches.”
Here are six of the most essential reads left to us by Jimmy Carter.
Why Not The Best?, 1975: This slim $1.95 156-page paperback, published by Broadman Press, a small Nashville press, first introduced America to the peanut farmer, naval officer, and nuclear physicist presidential candidate from Plains, Georgia. Published the year after Richard Nixon’s resignation from office following Watergate, Carter’s trademark optimism resonates more than ever 50 years later. “We Americans today are equally capable of correcting our faults, overcoming difficulties, managing our own affairs and facing the future with justifiable confidence as were our forefathers. I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine, pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment. There is a simple and effective way for public officials to regain public trust—be trustworthy!”
Keeping Faith, 1982: As prolific a woodworker as a writer, Carter’s White House memoir is notable for its absence of varnish as he reflects on his four years in office, with details drawn from the 5,000-page Oval Office diary he kept. Among the most riveting passages? Carter’s detailed recreation of the 13 days he spent at Camp David hammering out the historic 1979 Middle East peace accord between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Over a week into peace talks, with Carter mediating day and night, things reached an impasse over preconditions involving Israeli settlements. “Day 11: [Secretary of State Cyrus] Vance burst into the room. His face was white as he announced, ‘Sadat is leaving. He and his aides are already packed. He asked me to order a helicopter!’ It was a terrible moment. I sat quietly and assessed the significance of this development — a rupture between Sadat and me, and its consequences for my country and for the Middle East power balance. I moved over to the window and looked out to the Catoctin Mountains and prayed fervently for a few minutes that somehow we could find peace.”
Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life with Rosalynn Carter, 1987: In retrospect, with everything the Carters ended up achieving post-presidency, it’s remarkable to remember the first couple was rudderless after Carter lost his re-election bid in 1980 and the couple returned, defeated, to their small home in Plains. Everything to Gain chronicles the couple’s long bike rides together as they charted an ambitious future for themselves with the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity as centerpieces. “Retirement can be one of life’s greatest dangers if all we do is brace ourselves to face what we think will be many barren and useless years. [Retirees] fear a monotonous life without purpose — and without respect from others. But this need not happen. As we have tried to show, longer life and earlier retirement can create significant new opportunities. A second career can be gratifying because it is built upon many years of experience, accumulated knowledge, influence and perhaps freedom from financial uncertainty. This period may offer the first chance to repay our community by service and sharing.”
Turning Point, 1992: In this memoir chronicling Carter’s first political campaign for Georgia state senate in 1962, the future presidential candidate describes his bare-knuckled introduction to good-ole-boy rural politics at its most corrupt. On election day, thanks to a phone call from a family member reporting improprieties at the Georgetown courthouse, the 38-year-old Carter walked in to confront election officials openly stuffing the ballot box with his opponent’s name. “Instead of voting booths, there was a cardboard whiskey box sitting on an open counter. An irregular hole, about five inches in diameter, had been cut in the top of the carton. Adjacent to the box was an area where ballots were delivered to voters and where they were expected to mark their choice. [Election officials] Joe Hurst and Doc Hammond were standing on either side of the voting places, ostentatiously watching as each person indicated a choice, folded the ballot and dropped it into the hole. With one voter, Doc pointed to [Carter’s opponent] Homer Moore’s campaign brochure and said, ‘This is the one Joe wants.’ It was an amazing scene, permanently etched in my memory. I walked forward and asked, ‘Where are the voting booths?’ Joe said, ‘This is such a simple election, for just one office, we’ve decided they’re not necessary today.’ ‘The law requires that people vote in secret and you’re watching everyone,’ I replied. ‘You’re also trying to tell them how to vote. You are breaking a lot of laws. Who’s in charge of the election?’ Joe replied, ‘Well, Doc here is the poll manager and I’m the chairman of the Democratic committee so I guess you might say we’re in charge.’ The grin on Joe Hurst’s face burned me up. I had been betrayed by a political system in which I had had confidence, and I was mad as hell!” (Thanks to enterprising Atlanta Journal reporter John Pennington, who flew to Americus in his small plane to investigate Carter’s election fraud claims, the ballot stuffing was exposed and Carter went on to be sworn in as a state senator in January 1963).
An Hour Before Daylight, 2001: This poignant memoir of Carter’s rural boyhood is chock full of the life lessons, experiences, and small-town values that would later shape his work as a world leader. Arguably, the deeply personal book also contains some of Carter’s finest writing. “My most persistent impression as a farm boy was of the earth. There was a closeness, almost an immersion, in the sand, loam and red clay that seemed natural and constant. The soil caressed my bare feet, and the dust was always boiling up from the dirt road that passed 60 feet from our front door, so that inside our clapboard house the red clay particles, ranging in size from face powder to grits were ever present, particularly in the summertime, when the wooden doors were kept open and the screens just stopped the trash and some of the less adventurous flies.”
A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, 2015: The president’s penultimate book reflects on a remarkable 90-year life with pride, his sense of humor intact and a few second thoughts. He also leaves readers with the same Carter optimism that percolated through his first book 40 years earlier: “When people in other nations face a challenge or a problem, it would be good to have them look to Washington for assistance or as a sterling example. Our government should be known to be opposed to war, dedicated to the resolution of disputes by peaceful means, and whenever possible, eager to accomplish this goal. We should be seen as the unswerving champion of human rights, both among our own citizens and within the global community. America should be the focal point around which other nations can rally against threats to our quality of our common environment. We should be willing to lead by example in sharing our great wealth with those in need. Our own society should provide equal opportunity for all citizens and assure that they are provided the basic necessities of life. There should be no sacrifice in exemplifying these traits. All Americans could be united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the political and moral values that we have espoused and sought during the past 240 years.”
