Jimmy Carter, American Moralist

Title Details

Pages: 448

Illustrations: 32 b&w photos

Trim size: 6.120in x 9.250in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 10/01/1997

ISBN: 9-780-8203-1949-0

List Price: $36.95

Hardcover

Pub Date: 04/01/2017

ISBN: 9-780-8203-5243-5

List Price: $97.95

Jimmy Carter, American Moralist

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  • Description
  • Reviews

Jimmy Carter has baffled the public from his first bid for elective office in racially divided rural Georgia through his postpresidential career as a global peacemaker and human rights activist. Is he a moral visionary or a well-meaning but sometimes misguided moralizer? More important, what might America learn about itself by examining the life and legacy of this enigmatic leader?

In Jimmy Carter, American Moralist, the first full-scale biography of Carter since 1980, Kenneth E. Morris shows us that any conclusions about Carter's leadership and its adequacy to his challenges as president cannot ignore the moral quandary that vexed the nation not only under Carter but ever since. Through film and popular music, personality profiles and campaign summaries, poll findings and landmark court decisions, Morris sheds light on the cultural forces that shaped Carter and produced the troubled society that made him president.

Carter's story is the moral story of our times, and in asking not whether Carter is "good" but whether he has been good for America, we see the promises and pitfalls of our common values.

A penetrating analysis of the unique moral outlook that animated an enigmatic president.

Kirkus Reviews

[Written] with humor, precision, and precocious hindsight.

Washington Post Book World

A nuanced portrait of an intelligent, sincere, and decent man, who is more complex and more conflicted than Carter himself might like us to think.

St. Louis Post Dispatch

Morris succeeds as an intellectual biographer.

Publishers Weekly

Required reading for every junkie of contemporary politics and history.

—Bill Shipp

A timely volume that serves as a biography, cultural critique, and reevaluation.

Library Journal

This volume is a thorough examination of a man whose high ideals were shattered as president but who, like the Phoenix, rose from the ashes to realize his highest dreams. A book well worth reading-and studying.

Presidential Studies Quarterly

Outstanding.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About the Author/Editor

KENNETH E. MORRIS teaches sociology at the University of Georgia.