Category Archives: Jimmy Carter

1977-1981

Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents

Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents Book Cover Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents
Bob Greene
Three Rivers Press
10/25/2005
Audiobook
304 pages

What if you set off on a vacation trip in search of history—and your destination was the men who had been president? Asking himself that tantalizing question, bestselling author Bob Greene embarked on a long journey across the nation, hoping to spend time with Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Bush and Ronald Reagan. The result of his odyssey is Fraternity.

I had hoped that this book would have some deep insights into the lives of Presidents and show the behind the scenes story of the presidency. But, instead it answered questions on how the President gets his groceries, and what name his friends call him by. I think the most annoying thing was listening to the inane questions the author asked. When I found that I had mistakenly returned the last disk before I listened to it, I didn’t feel any loss and gladly set it aside.

An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood

An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood Book Cover An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood
Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster
January 2001
288

In An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter, bestselling author of Living Faith and Sources of Strength, re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm before the civil rights movement forever changed it and the country. Carter writes about the powerful rhythms of countryside and community in a sharecropping economy, offering an unforgettable portrait of his father, a brilliant farmer and a strict segregationist who treated black workers with respect and fairness; his strong-willed and well-read mother; and the five other people who shaped his early life, three of whom were black. 
Carter's clean and eloquent prose evokes a time when the cycles of life were predictable and simple and the rules were heartbreaking and complex. In his singular voice and with a novelist's gift for detail, Jimmy Carter creates a sensitive portrait of an era that shaped the nation and recounts a classic, American story of enduring importance.