Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter: Faith, Peanuts, and the Pursuit of Peace is a concise, balanced biography of the 39th president of the United States. It traces Carter’s life from his childhood in rural Plains, Georgia—growing up without electricity or running water on a peanut farm—through his education at the U.S. Naval Academy, his service as a nuclear submarine officer, and his return home after his father’s death to rebuild the family business.

The book follows his political rise from the Georgia State Senate to the governorship, his improbable 1976 outsider campaign that defeated incumbent Gerald Ford, and his single term in the White House. It examines both his domestic challenges (inflation, the energy crisis, the “malaise” speech) and his lasting foreign-policy achievements, especially the Camp David Accords that produced the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab nation, the normalization of relations with China, and the Panama Canal Treaties.

After his 1980 defeat by Ronald Reagan, the narrative shifts to Carter’s extraordinary 43-year post-presidency—the longest in American history. Through the Carter Center he founded with Rosalynn, he monitored elections, mediated conflicts, built houses with Habitat for Humanity, and led the near-eradication of Guinea worm disease, reducing cases from 3.5 million to fewer than twenty. The book concludes with his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, his final years in Plains, and an assessment of a legacy that grew stronger after he left office than while he held it.