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Kai Bird
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The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter Kindle Edition
by Kai Bird (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 304
===
“Important . . . [a] landmark presidential biography . . . Bird is able to build a persuasive case that the Carter presidency deserves this new look.”—The New York Times Book Review
An essential re-evaluation of the complex triumphs and tragedies of Jimmy Carter’s presidential legacy—from the expert biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning co-author of American Prometheus
Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. In this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Kai Bird deftly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping point in American history.
As president, Carter was not merely an outsider; he was an outlier. He was the only president in a century to grow up in the heart of the Deep South, and his born-again Christianity made him the most openly religious president in memory.
This outlier brought to the White House a rare mix of humility, candor, and unnerving self-confidence that neither Washington nor America was ready to embrace. Decades before today’s public reckoning with the vast gulf between America’s ethos and its actions, Carter looked out on a nation torn by race and demoralized by Watergate and Vietnam and prescribed a radical self-examination from which voters recoiled. The cost of his unshakable belief in doing the right thing would be losing his re-election bid—and witnessing the ascendance of Reagan.
In these remarkable pages, Bird traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive domestic agenda to his controversial foreign policy record, taking readers inside the Oval Office and through Carter’s battles with both a political establishment and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as any foreign power.
In these remarkable pages, Bird traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive domestic agenda to his controversial foreign policy record, taking readers inside the Oval Office and through Carter’s battles with both a political establishment and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as any foreign power.
Bird shows how issues still hotly debated today—from national health care to growing inequality and racism to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—burned at the heart of Carter’s America, and consumed a president who found a moral duty in solving them.
Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration and recently declassified documents, Bird delivers a profound, clear-eyed evaluation of a leader whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood. The Outlier is the definitive account of an enigmatic presidency—both as it really happened and as it is remembered in the American consciousness.
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Print length
733 pages
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Review
"An 'outlier' among politicians, Carter shows what democratic politics could be, if the power-hungry, dishonest figures would just get out of the way. Bird's book offers a rich and compelling account of Carter's sincere efforts to make American policies match the nation's ideals."--The Washington Post
"In Kai Bird's latest masterpiece, a book that models the virtues of the biographer's craft, Jimmy Carter receives his due. Deeply empirical and exquisitely sculpted, The Outlier . . . is a landmark. . . . Bird's treatment gives Carter's presidency the deep analysis it deserves." --Foreign Policy
"Bird's nuanced study not only sets the record straight on Carter's misunderstood presidency, it brings him to life in a way that few other biographers have been able to thus far."--Variety
"A bracing reminder that the 39th president was a man of probity, decency, high hopes, and high moral standards . . . Bird's take on whom he calls 'our most enigmatic president' is relentlessly fair-minded. [The Outlier] redeems [Carter's] presidency and reminds us of how callous we might have been during his years in office." --The Boston Globe
"This is superior history, superbly researched and marvelously written."--Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot
"This beautifully written book will take its place alongside other superb one-volume biographies of American presidents. The Outlier will raise readers' estimates of Jimmy Carter's term in office."--Robert Dallek, New York Times bestselling author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and An Unfinished Life
"A grand work of revisionist history, prodigiously researched and gracefully written, The Outlier tells the story of a singular man and a unique presidency at a critical point in American and world history."--David Nasaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Million
"Bird tells the story with sympathy, intelligence, and a wealth of marvelously organized information. The Outlier is a pleasure to read."--Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments
"Books about presidents are often fat and dull--not this one. Bird has talked to everybody and written a compelling account of the most underrated president in American history."--Thomas Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Killing of Crazy Horse
"Incisive . . . [The Outlier is] the best study to date of the Carter era and a substantial contribution to the history of the 1970s."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
". . . a lucid, penetrating portrait that should spur reconsideration of Carter's much-maligned presidency."--Publishers Weekly
"A readable, masterful biography of a complex leader . . ."--Booklist (starred review)
About the Author
Kai Birdis an award-winning historian and journalist. Executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy, of McGeorge and William Bundy, Robert Ames, and President Jimmy Carter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for American Prometheus- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin), which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. His work has been honored with the BIO Award for his significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. He has also written about the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He lives in New York City and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Susan Goldmark.
Product details
ASIN : B08KPJ5XSF
Publisher : Crown (15 June 2021)
Language : English
File size : 96905 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 733 pages
Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration and recently declassified documents, Bird delivers a profound, clear-eyed evaluation of a leader whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood. The Outlier is the definitive account of an enigmatic presidency—both as it really happened and as it is remembered in the American consciousness.
Read less
Print length
733 pages
Product description
Review
"An 'outlier' among politicians, Carter shows what democratic politics could be, if the power-hungry, dishonest figures would just get out of the way. Bird's book offers a rich and compelling account of Carter's sincere efforts to make American policies match the nation's ideals."--The Washington Post
"In Kai Bird's latest masterpiece, a book that models the virtues of the biographer's craft, Jimmy Carter receives his due. Deeply empirical and exquisitely sculpted, The Outlier . . . is a landmark. . . . Bird's treatment gives Carter's presidency the deep analysis it deserves." --Foreign Policy
"Bird's nuanced study not only sets the record straight on Carter's misunderstood presidency, it brings him to life in a way that few other biographers have been able to thus far."--Variety
"A bracing reminder that the 39th president was a man of probity, decency, high hopes, and high moral standards . . . Bird's take on whom he calls 'our most enigmatic president' is relentlessly fair-minded. [The Outlier] redeems [Carter's] presidency and reminds us of how callous we might have been during his years in office." --The Boston Globe
"This is superior history, superbly researched and marvelously written."--Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot
"This beautifully written book will take its place alongside other superb one-volume biographies of American presidents. The Outlier will raise readers' estimates of Jimmy Carter's term in office."--Robert Dallek, New York Times bestselling author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and An Unfinished Life
"A grand work of revisionist history, prodigiously researched and gracefully written, The Outlier tells the story of a singular man and a unique presidency at a critical point in American and world history."--David Nasaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Million
"Bird tells the story with sympathy, intelligence, and a wealth of marvelously organized information. The Outlier is a pleasure to read."--Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments
"Books about presidents are often fat and dull--not this one. Bird has talked to everybody and written a compelling account of the most underrated president in American history."--Thomas Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Killing of Crazy Horse
"Incisive . . . [The Outlier is] the best study to date of the Carter era and a substantial contribution to the history of the 1970s."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
". . . a lucid, penetrating portrait that should spur reconsideration of Carter's much-maligned presidency."--Publishers Weekly
"A readable, masterful biography of a complex leader . . ."--Booklist (starred review)
About the Author
Kai Birdis an award-winning historian and journalist. Executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy, of McGeorge and William Bundy, Robert Ames, and President Jimmy Carter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for American Prometheus- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin), which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. His work has been honored with the BIO Award for his significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. He has also written about the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He lives in New York City and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Susan Goldmark.
Product details
ASIN : B08KPJ5XSF
Publisher : Crown (15 June 2021)
Language : English
File size : 96905 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 733 pages
Best Sellers Rank: 14,380 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)5 in Biographies of U.S. Presidents
6 in President & Head of State Biographies
13 in International RelationsCustomer Reviews:
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 304
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Kai Bird
Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer.
Top reviews from Australia
Dmitry Jr
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like all biographies, it all starts with Carter’s pre-presidential life in a rather uneventful town in Plains, Georgia. He was never raised with a silver spoon like the other presidents, but as a poor [white] peanut farmer in the segregationist south. He was never rich, nor certainly poor (when compared to the other residents in Plains). The young Carter was most unorthodox compared to his contemporaries: his playmates were usually African Americans, he never harbored any racist views, and was always reading books on his free time. Life would have been different had his father not died in 1953. Carter would have had an illustrious career in the Navy and its nuclear capabilities, but his time in the Navy stood out from other presidents after him. Carter did not see combat, but he has gained knowledge of nuclear engineering. That and working as a modest peanut farmer who got rich in the 50s and early 60s. The tumultuous 1960s got Carter interested in politics and from there, Carter would win the 1976 presidential elections.
With such an outlook, belief, and relevant experience outside of politics, it is no surprise that the Carter experience was so unorthodox even by today’s standards (Trump notwithstanding). It would have been appropriate to say that Carter ran his first term as his second term, but even then Carter went against the mainstream in 1970s Democratic party politics. Compared to the Nixon days, Carter’s presidency did not have any major scandals or corrupt practices. He advanced environmental policies such as expanding nature preserves and stimulating the growth of green energy. Consumer protection, most famously in automobiles and clean air & rivers, was expanded, although automobile protection was probably more the legacy of Ralph Nader (whose supporters Carter promoted to Washington).
The Outlier uses a collection of primary and secondary sources, but there is more reliance on primary sources to explain the personalities and thoughts of the figures in the Carter presidency and those around him (including the former President himself).
The Outlier is probably one of the best biographies of Carter that truly explain the man and his presidency. It has a very convincing argument and is very well written and it can be very hard to put the book down. I would say that it is worth reading to get a new perspective about Carter and finally judge his presidency differently.
Peter Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars
6 in President & Head of State Biographies
13 in International RelationsCustomer Reviews:
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 304
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
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Kai Bird
Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer.
His new book is The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. A biography of a CIA officer, The Good Spy was released on May 20, 2014 by Crown/Random House.
Kai's last book was a memoir about the Middle East entitled Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Scribner, April 27, 2010).
It was a 2011 Finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London.
He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's writing fellowship, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Center, Bellagio, Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Miami Beach.
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4.7 out of 5 stars
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4.7 out of 5 stars
Top reviews from Australia
Dmitry Jr
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book will certainly change your perspective on his presidency
Reviewed in the United States on 9 March 2023
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With the recent news about Jimmy Carter on what may likely be his last days, it does seem rather timely to discuss the man and his legacy. So, I got myself this biography of the former president written by Kai Bird and it must be said that The Outlier paints an entirely different picture of Jimmy Carter. Instead of viewing the Carter presidency as a failure, Bird sees the Carter presidency as an anomaly: the president did not spend any time in the glitz and glamor of Washington DC and yet spent his entire four years in office constantly working, and it was all with a personality and a deeply religious outlook of life coming from Georgia (the deep south), Baptist Christianity, and an unorthodox education. All of this make Carter not just an outsider of Washington politics, but an outlier.
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With the recent news about Jimmy Carter on what may likely be his last days, it does seem rather timely to discuss the man and his legacy. So, I got myself this biography of the former president written by Kai Bird and it must be said that The Outlier paints an entirely different picture of Jimmy Carter. Instead of viewing the Carter presidency as a failure, Bird sees the Carter presidency as an anomaly: the president did not spend any time in the glitz and glamor of Washington DC and yet spent his entire four years in office constantly working, and it was all with a personality and a deeply religious outlook of life coming from Georgia (the deep south), Baptist Christianity, and an unorthodox education. All of this make Carter not just an outsider of Washington politics, but an outlier.
Like all biographies, it all starts with Carter’s pre-presidential life in a rather uneventful town in Plains, Georgia. He was never raised with a silver spoon like the other presidents, but as a poor [white] peanut farmer in the segregationist south. He was never rich, nor certainly poor (when compared to the other residents in Plains). The young Carter was most unorthodox compared to his contemporaries: his playmates were usually African Americans, he never harbored any racist views, and was always reading books on his free time. Life would have been different had his father not died in 1953. Carter would have had an illustrious career in the Navy and its nuclear capabilities, but his time in the Navy stood out from other presidents after him. Carter did not see combat, but he has gained knowledge of nuclear engineering. That and working as a modest peanut farmer who got rich in the 50s and early 60s. The tumultuous 1960s got Carter interested in politics and from there, Carter would win the 1976 presidential elections.
With such an outlook, belief, and relevant experience outside of politics, it is no surprise that the Carter experience was so unorthodox even by today’s standards (Trump notwithstanding). It would have been appropriate to say that Carter ran his first term as his second term, but even then Carter went against the mainstream in 1970s Democratic party politics. Compared to the Nixon days, Carter’s presidency did not have any major scandals or corrupt practices. He advanced environmental policies such as expanding nature preserves and stimulating the growth of green energy. Consumer protection, most famously in automobiles and clean air & rivers, was expanded, although automobile protection was probably more the legacy of Ralph Nader (whose supporters Carter promoted to Washington).
His economic policies were against the Roosevelt New Deal policies.
It was certainly neoliberal, but such policies were made sure to not harm the American people. Such policies were made to curb inflation, but Carter’s (and his Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker’s) contribution would only pay off after he was out of office. What went wrong?
Carter’s personality might have some blame. Maybe it was his National Security advisor, the hawkish cold warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski whose foreign policy outlook constantly clashed with Carter’s pacifist ideas for foreign policy. Or perhaps Carter came it at a bad time: a sluggish economy coupled with inflation, the Iranian Revolution and the Hostage Crisis put Carter in a stressful situation. It was probably all of these problems that plagued the Carter presidency and gave it a bad name.
The Outlier uses a collection of primary and secondary sources, but there is more reliance on primary sources to explain the personalities and thoughts of the figures in the Carter presidency and those around him (including the former President himself).
This biography is structured in a way that anyone can read it without having any significant background knowledge of Jimmy Carter, his presidency, or the 1970s. Put it simply, you don’t need a degree to understand this book, and that is a good thing. In any other time, you could say that Kai Bird is too sympathetic to Carter. But in this peculiar time, where the past string of presidencies were considered lackluster (or in this current presidency, downright awful), people are now starting to look back to the Carter presidency as rather decent by comparison.
After reading this book, I am given the impression that Carter was a president that the US needed during a time when the US had an existential crisis, but Americans were not ready for a humble man like Carter.
Now, in the year 2023 the US faces such similar crises at a far worse intensity when compared to the 1970s, perhaps we should have listened to Carter and given him a chance. His “Malaise speech” was poorly received at the time, but he was telling the truth, whether we liked it or not.
The Outlier is probably one of the best biographies of Carter that truly explain the man and his presidency. It has a very convincing argument and is very well written and it can be very hard to put the book down. I would say that it is worth reading to get a new perspective about Carter and finally judge his presidency differently.
Peter Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rivetting, in depth analysis of a complex, fascinating man
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 September 2022
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A fascinating insight into the wall to wall decision-making and endless challenges of a very proactive, principled President.He makes UK politicians look like lightweight, posturing incompetents
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Warren Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars
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A fascinating insight into the wall to wall decision-making and endless challenges of a very proactive, principled President.He makes UK politicians look like lightweight, posturing incompetents
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Warren Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very fair and informative biography
Reviewed in the United States on 11 April 2024
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Bird has written an extremely well written and researched biography of Jimmy Carter. I was attracted to it in the wake of Rosalynn's recent death and with the knowledge that we will be losing her husband, who is now in hospice, fairly soon.
Having grown up in Texas and lived my adult life there and in North Carolina and Kentucky, I related to Kai Bird's approach to Carter as a product of his Southern upbringing--that it was pivotal to his religious faith and his understanding of race. But in his case, being raised playing with mostly black children and by a mother who had little if any racial prejudice, he grew up with the better parts of being Southern, absent the racism that was all around most of us. He was smart enough not to mention that in his gubernatorial campaign, but then quickly announced that the time for racial discrimination in Georgia was over after he had been elected.
The book is mostly about his presidency, and there is so much to tell there. "Scandals" that wouldn't even pass for the hint of a scandal today. Real accomplishments that people have forgotten about, but were often unpopular at the time. Carter's flaws are covered just as thoroughly as his virtues. For example, while he took care to listen to everyone and be polite, he generally thought of himself as the smartest person in the room. And Bird writes that he often was.
I remember the night Jimmy Carter got elected. It was a squeaker. Late in the night, the returns came in. It was the only time in history that Mississippi was a SWiNG state: enough of the white vote went for Carter to carry it for him when added to the black vote. Four years later, he was first challenged by Edward Kennedy for the nomination (Ted never conceded), and then he was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan.
But reading about how hard he worked to get an agreement at Camp David between Anwar Sadat (with whom he got along very well) and Menachem Begin (same cannot be said there) that resulted in the first peace and recognition between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors (Egypt) is inspiring. In fact, Carter worked hard at everything.
The most maddening part for me was the year-long Iran hostage crisis. Network coverage that year was a precursor to what we have now with 24 hour "news" networks that demand that everything get done NOW. Carter bowed to pressure to let the Shah enter the US in the first place, which started the crisis. Then he was patient about negotiating for their release, but finally gave into the pressure and authorized an ill-fated and ill-conceived rescue attempt. Servicemen died in that effort, but it is even more ridiculous when you read that those who insisted on doing it acknowledged that servicemen, hostages, and Iranians would all lose lives if it succeeded. Carter's national security advisor Brzezinski was pushing all these moves.
But none of that negates the accomplishments people have forgotten: the Panama Canal treaty, normalization of relations with China, putting human rights into the forefront of our international relations, among others.
Rosalynn plays a big part, and she herself is surprisingly influential--not just with her mental health campaign, but also weighing in on policy decisions.
The last chapter is on the post-presidency, and Carter continued to be a work-horse there. Starting as a writer and fostering the Carter Center to be more than just a presidential library, then moving on to working with Habitat for Humanity, eradicating diseases in Africa, and other causes. He also remained involved in foreign affairs, especially in the Middle East, sometimes to the displeasure of whoever was president at the time.
It is a long book, but it is broken down into chapters, and each chapter has sections. For those of you who, like me, read for only a given time each day, this works out really well. I highly recommend the book. It will remind you of things you lived through (if you lived back then), but also tell you about things you never knew. I, for instance, never knew how cold the Washington crowd was toward the Georgians. But I am not surprised.
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John L. Davies
4.0 out of 5 stars
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Bird has written an extremely well written and researched biography of Jimmy Carter. I was attracted to it in the wake of Rosalynn's recent death and with the knowledge that we will be losing her husband, who is now in hospice, fairly soon.
Having grown up in Texas and lived my adult life there and in North Carolina and Kentucky, I related to Kai Bird's approach to Carter as a product of his Southern upbringing--that it was pivotal to his religious faith and his understanding of race. But in his case, being raised playing with mostly black children and by a mother who had little if any racial prejudice, he grew up with the better parts of being Southern, absent the racism that was all around most of us. He was smart enough not to mention that in his gubernatorial campaign, but then quickly announced that the time for racial discrimination in Georgia was over after he had been elected.
The book is mostly about his presidency, and there is so much to tell there. "Scandals" that wouldn't even pass for the hint of a scandal today. Real accomplishments that people have forgotten about, but were often unpopular at the time. Carter's flaws are covered just as thoroughly as his virtues. For example, while he took care to listen to everyone and be polite, he generally thought of himself as the smartest person in the room. And Bird writes that he often was.
I remember the night Jimmy Carter got elected. It was a squeaker. Late in the night, the returns came in. It was the only time in history that Mississippi was a SWiNG state: enough of the white vote went for Carter to carry it for him when added to the black vote. Four years later, he was first challenged by Edward Kennedy for the nomination (Ted never conceded), and then he was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan.
But reading about how hard he worked to get an agreement at Camp David between Anwar Sadat (with whom he got along very well) and Menachem Begin (same cannot be said there) that resulted in the first peace and recognition between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors (Egypt) is inspiring. In fact, Carter worked hard at everything.
The most maddening part for me was the year-long Iran hostage crisis. Network coverage that year was a precursor to what we have now with 24 hour "news" networks that demand that everything get done NOW. Carter bowed to pressure to let the Shah enter the US in the first place, which started the crisis. Then he was patient about negotiating for their release, but finally gave into the pressure and authorized an ill-fated and ill-conceived rescue attempt. Servicemen died in that effort, but it is even more ridiculous when you read that those who insisted on doing it acknowledged that servicemen, hostages, and Iranians would all lose lives if it succeeded. Carter's national security advisor Brzezinski was pushing all these moves.
But none of that negates the accomplishments people have forgotten: the Panama Canal treaty, normalization of relations with China, putting human rights into the forefront of our international relations, among others.
Rosalynn plays a big part, and she herself is surprisingly influential--not just with her mental health campaign, but also weighing in on policy decisions.
The last chapter is on the post-presidency, and Carter continued to be a work-horse there. Starting as a writer and fostering the Carter Center to be more than just a presidential library, then moving on to working with Habitat for Humanity, eradicating diseases in Africa, and other causes. He also remained involved in foreign affairs, especially in the Middle East, sometimes to the displeasure of whoever was president at the time.
It is a long book, but it is broken down into chapters, and each chapter has sections. For those of you who, like me, read for only a given time each day, this works out really well. I highly recommend the book. It will remind you of things you lived through (if you lived back then), but also tell you about things you never knew. I, for instance, never knew how cold the Washington crowd was toward the Georgians. But I am not surprised.
Read less
Report
John L. Davies
4.0 out of 5 stars
The innovative works he accomplished
Reviewed in Canada on 23 July 2021
wcw
4.0 out of 5 stars
wcw
4.0 out of 5 stars
A thorough but too-forgiving portrait
Reviewed in the United States on 21 June 2021
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Jimmy Carter is enjoying a real renaissance lately, as the subject of several new biographies and documentaries. It could be because enough time has passed that his presidency can now be analyzed as history, it could be because of his sheer longevity and status as the eldest of our elder statesman, or it could be because even a conventional “failed presidency” looks pretty good now compared to what we just lived through.
At any rate, it’s difficult not to compare Kai Bird’s biography with Jonathan Alter’s “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life”, the last major Carter biography that came out last year, and even Bird gives a hat tip to Alter’s work in his acknowledgments. And I have to say, beat-by-beat, Bird’s and Alter’s works are substantially the same book, with many of the same emphases, the same anecdotes and the same structure - both offer dialogue-heavy, fly-on-the-wall, chronological, sympathetic portrayals of Carter's public life. There are, however, a few key differences, the main one being that Bird’s book is very good - but Alter’s is much better.
The main, obvious difference is that Bird chose to focus mostly on Carter’s presidency while Alter devotes more time to his full life story. To his credit, Bird doesn’t race through Carter’s upbringing and pre-presidency in a brief prologue - he devotes a good 100+ pages to it. While it’s not as satisfying as Alter’s longer treatment of this part of Carter’s life, it does help lay the foundation for the story of Carter’s presidency. That said, Bird looks at Carter’s upbringing mostly through the lens of race relations, which is an important part of his life story and political development, but equally important is his education and experience as an engineer and businessman, which aren’t explored as thoroughly.
Bird devotes the bulk of his book to Carter’s presidency, though I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what he did with all this extra space that Alter didn’t also thoroughly cover in 1/3rd fewer pages. Bird does sketch out fuller portraits of many of Carter’s staffers and Cabinet members, and provides more background leading up to major events like the Camp David summit and the Iran hostage crisis. And his telling of those events is excellent, particularly the dramatic, day-by-day tick-tock of the Camp David talks. Carter’s domestic struggles with the economy, the energy crisis and his tense relations with more liberal members of his party and the Democratic Congress are also well-covered (though curiously, Joe Biden only gets a couple of cursory mentions in the book, even though he was the first Senator to endorse Carter in 1976 - even slightly more space devoted to their relationship would have made the book just a little more timely).
Two drawbacks about Bird’s book really stood out to me, though. One, he never seems to question or fact-check some of the more colorful anecdotes he uses. Alter takes with a grain of salt some of the stories Carter relates in the many autobiographical books he's written. A story Carter tells in which, as a young businessman, he threatened to flush a $5 bill down the toilet instead of paying it as dues to a local white-supremacist business organization is described as “suspiciously colorful” in Alter’s book, as he notes that Carter included the story in only one of the three books in which he described the incident. But Bird relates the story as fact, with no attribution in the text and no skepticism.
Bird also relates without question Carter’s anecdote about his mother being asked after his inauguration if she’s proud of her son, to which she cheekily responds, “Which one?” This question-and-retort has been attributed to many others prior to Miss Lillian, including Dwight Eisenhower’s mother, and I can find no reporting at the time that this exchange really happened on Inauguration Day, or any other time. A 1985 Helen Thomas column claims it happened during the campaign - it’s possible she created this legend and Carter ran with it and elided some of the details (he even tells the same story in slightly different ways in two of his books), but I question whether it happened at all. Bird doesn’t. And Alter, tellingly, doesn’t mention it.
Bird also tells the story of Carter getting on stage with Dizzy Gillespie to sing “Salt Peanuts” - but he tells it twice in the book, describing it as happening at two different events at two different times. It only happened once, but Carter conflated the two events in one of his books - so Bird does, too, even though by doing so, he ends up contradicting himself in his own book.
And in one of the most memorable parts of Carter's "malaise speech" in which he quoted "a southern governor" as telling him, “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation - you’re just managing the government," Bird misattributes that quote to Bill Clinton instead of South Carolina governor Richard Riley. Not only that, but he somehow combines several different comments from several different people into one long quote and attributes all of it to Clinton!
These are all small, relatively unimportant little stories in the grand scheme of things. But they illustrate Bird’s somewhat troubling tendency of taking people’s word for what happened, or picking up some "fact" from somewhere, without considering the source or bothering to double-check whether the accounts are really true. If he didn’t fact-check the small stuff, what are we to make of the more important stuff he writes about?
The second drawback of Bird’s book is laid out right in the prologue. “No modern president worked harder at the job and few achieved more than Carter in his one term in office,” he writes gushingly. Carter’s commitment to human rights “contributed more to the disintegration of the Soviet system than did Ronald Reagan’s reckless spending on Star Wars.” Etc., etc. At least Bird shows his hand and expresses his point of view right up front, but he could have been a little less hyperbolic in his praise. Alter’s portrayal of Carter’s presidency is sympathetic but fair - he credits Carter for his tangible achievements, and points out where he deserves credit for initiating programs or reforms that didn’t fully come to fruition until after he left the White House. But he also doesn’t hesitate to point out Carter’s missteps and shortcomings.
In Bird’s telling, Carter’s efforts are always underappreciated, his critics are always wrong, the press is always unfair, and everyone who judged his presidency to be a disappointment is simply mistaken. Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is portrayed as a Svengali who was responsible for many of Carter’s biggest missteps, and the irresponsible press was solely to blame for “the public perception of the Carter administration as weak and ineffectual.”
But perception is no small thing. Carter’s presidency cannot be dismissed as a complete failure, and both Alter and Bird rightly try to correct that perception. But his presidency also cannot be whitewashed as a great, unheralded success that America just didn’t appreciate at the time. Carter could be a micromanaging technocrat whose actions and words were simply not persuasive or inspirational. The best leaders inspire you to do better, they don’t lecture you about what you’ve done wrong. They are strong in their convictions and don’t vacillate in their responses. And no one can be an effective leader if they can't persuade anyone to follow.
Alter acknowledges all of these faults. Bird excuses them. Alter’s book is a balanced biography that celebrates Carter’s successes but also helps you understand why his is not a celebrated presidency. Bird’s book is thorough, well-meaning and well-written but veers too close to hagiography in its conclusions, and he doesn’t really make a case in support of his subtitle describing Carter’s presidency as “unfinished”. Together with his troubling tendency to get simple facts wrong - even little things that an amateur like me was able to spot - these drawbacks keep his book from being excellent. It’s a very good read. But in the final analysis, Alter’s is simply better.
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Jimmy Carter is enjoying a real renaissance lately, as the subject of several new biographies and documentaries. It could be because enough time has passed that his presidency can now be analyzed as history, it could be because of his sheer longevity and status as the eldest of our elder statesman, or it could be because even a conventional “failed presidency” looks pretty good now compared to what we just lived through.
At any rate, it’s difficult not to compare Kai Bird’s biography with Jonathan Alter’s “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life”, the last major Carter biography that came out last year, and even Bird gives a hat tip to Alter’s work in his acknowledgments. And I have to say, beat-by-beat, Bird’s and Alter’s works are substantially the same book, with many of the same emphases, the same anecdotes and the same structure - both offer dialogue-heavy, fly-on-the-wall, chronological, sympathetic portrayals of Carter's public life. There are, however, a few key differences, the main one being that Bird’s book is very good - but Alter’s is much better.
The main, obvious difference is that Bird chose to focus mostly on Carter’s presidency while Alter devotes more time to his full life story. To his credit, Bird doesn’t race through Carter’s upbringing and pre-presidency in a brief prologue - he devotes a good 100+ pages to it. While it’s not as satisfying as Alter’s longer treatment of this part of Carter’s life, it does help lay the foundation for the story of Carter’s presidency. That said, Bird looks at Carter’s upbringing mostly through the lens of race relations, which is an important part of his life story and political development, but equally important is his education and experience as an engineer and businessman, which aren’t explored as thoroughly.
Bird devotes the bulk of his book to Carter’s presidency, though I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what he did with all this extra space that Alter didn’t also thoroughly cover in 1/3rd fewer pages. Bird does sketch out fuller portraits of many of Carter’s staffers and Cabinet members, and provides more background leading up to major events like the Camp David summit and the Iran hostage crisis. And his telling of those events is excellent, particularly the dramatic, day-by-day tick-tock of the Camp David talks. Carter’s domestic struggles with the economy, the energy crisis and his tense relations with more liberal members of his party and the Democratic Congress are also well-covered (though curiously, Joe Biden only gets a couple of cursory mentions in the book, even though he was the first Senator to endorse Carter in 1976 - even slightly more space devoted to their relationship would have made the book just a little more timely).
Two drawbacks about Bird’s book really stood out to me, though. One, he never seems to question or fact-check some of the more colorful anecdotes he uses. Alter takes with a grain of salt some of the stories Carter relates in the many autobiographical books he's written. A story Carter tells in which, as a young businessman, he threatened to flush a $5 bill down the toilet instead of paying it as dues to a local white-supremacist business organization is described as “suspiciously colorful” in Alter’s book, as he notes that Carter included the story in only one of the three books in which he described the incident. But Bird relates the story as fact, with no attribution in the text and no skepticism.
Bird also relates without question Carter’s anecdote about his mother being asked after his inauguration if she’s proud of her son, to which she cheekily responds, “Which one?” This question-and-retort has been attributed to many others prior to Miss Lillian, including Dwight Eisenhower’s mother, and I can find no reporting at the time that this exchange really happened on Inauguration Day, or any other time. A 1985 Helen Thomas column claims it happened during the campaign - it’s possible she created this legend and Carter ran with it and elided some of the details (he even tells the same story in slightly different ways in two of his books), but I question whether it happened at all. Bird doesn’t. And Alter, tellingly, doesn’t mention it.
Bird also tells the story of Carter getting on stage with Dizzy Gillespie to sing “Salt Peanuts” - but he tells it twice in the book, describing it as happening at two different events at two different times. It only happened once, but Carter conflated the two events in one of his books - so Bird does, too, even though by doing so, he ends up contradicting himself in his own book.
And in one of the most memorable parts of Carter's "malaise speech" in which he quoted "a southern governor" as telling him, “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation - you’re just managing the government," Bird misattributes that quote to Bill Clinton instead of South Carolina governor Richard Riley. Not only that, but he somehow combines several different comments from several different people into one long quote and attributes all of it to Clinton!
These are all small, relatively unimportant little stories in the grand scheme of things. But they illustrate Bird’s somewhat troubling tendency of taking people’s word for what happened, or picking up some "fact" from somewhere, without considering the source or bothering to double-check whether the accounts are really true. If he didn’t fact-check the small stuff, what are we to make of the more important stuff he writes about?
The second drawback of Bird’s book is laid out right in the prologue. “No modern president worked harder at the job and few achieved more than Carter in his one term in office,” he writes gushingly. Carter’s commitment to human rights “contributed more to the disintegration of the Soviet system than did Ronald Reagan’s reckless spending on Star Wars.” Etc., etc. At least Bird shows his hand and expresses his point of view right up front, but he could have been a little less hyperbolic in his praise. Alter’s portrayal of Carter’s presidency is sympathetic but fair - he credits Carter for his tangible achievements, and points out where he deserves credit for initiating programs or reforms that didn’t fully come to fruition until after he left the White House. But he also doesn’t hesitate to point out Carter’s missteps and shortcomings.
In Bird’s telling, Carter’s efforts are always underappreciated, his critics are always wrong, the press is always unfair, and everyone who judged his presidency to be a disappointment is simply mistaken. Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is portrayed as a Svengali who was responsible for many of Carter’s biggest missteps, and the irresponsible press was solely to blame for “the public perception of the Carter administration as weak and ineffectual.”
But perception is no small thing. Carter’s presidency cannot be dismissed as a complete failure, and both Alter and Bird rightly try to correct that perception. But his presidency also cannot be whitewashed as a great, unheralded success that America just didn’t appreciate at the time. Carter could be a micromanaging technocrat whose actions and words were simply not persuasive or inspirational. The best leaders inspire you to do better, they don’t lecture you about what you’ve done wrong. They are strong in their convictions and don’t vacillate in their responses. And no one can be an effective leader if they can't persuade anyone to follow.
Alter acknowledges all of these faults. Bird excuses them. Alter’s book is a balanced biography that celebrates Carter’s successes but also helps you understand why his is not a celebrated presidency. Bird’s book is thorough, well-meaning and well-written but veers too close to hagiography in its conclusions, and he doesn’t really make a case in support of his subtitle describing Carter’s presidency as “unfinished”. Together with his troubling tendency to get simple facts wrong - even little things that an amateur like me was able to spot - these drawbacks keep his book from being excellent. It’s a very good read. But in the final analysis, Alter’s is simply better.
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Thomas
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July 16, 2021
I enjoyed reading this comprehensive biography of a much maligned President. I rate it 4.5 stars rounded up. The author goes beyond the Reagan electoral landslide to point out that the popular vote was fairly close if you add Anderson and Carter together--47,6% to Reagan's 50.7%. In addition, nearly 50% of eligible voters did not vote.
The author lists some of Carter's major accomplishments:
Domestic:
Deregulation of energy, trucking and airline sectors. Energy set the US on the road to energy independence of today. Airlines opened up to middle class Americans.
Foreign:
Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel
Panama Canal Treaty
Alaska National Parks/wilderness/Wildlife refuges expansion--the largest of any US President
Succeeded in getting all US hostages released from Iran without a single person getting killed. Contrast that with 284 US Marines killed by Hezbollah in Lebanon under Reagan a few years later.
This is a door stopper of a book--628 pages of text with another 150 pages of bibliography, footnotes and index. It took me 11 days to read it.
The author did extensive research, interviewing about a hundred people, reading Carter Presidential papers and many other sources.
One quote: Then Georgia governor giving his inaugural speech: "This is a time for truth and frankness...I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over."
Lieutenant Governor Maddox, sitting on the platform, was stunned, and soon denounced him as a liar. Jody Powell retorted. "Being called a liar by Lester Maddox is like being called ugly by a frog."
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thanks to Kai Bird and Random House for sending me this book.
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Montzalee Wittmann
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May 2, 2021
The Outlier
The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter
by Kai Bird
Crown Publishing
I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this terrific book!
Jimmy Carter has to be my favorite President. Obama was good but even he had flaws he just hid them. With Carter, he was open and honest and according to polls, people would rather have someone that breaks the rules a few times if it means getting things done. Not me, I want someone with integrity and honestly! But Carter did get things done. I think Carter's time in office was often bad timing on the world stage and other staged plots by Roy Cohn as described in the book.
This follows Carter from his humble beginning on a farm with no running water or electricity to after his Presidency. From boy, man, husband and soldier, to Senator, Governor, then to President and beyond. It deals with family, friends, co-workers, his ideals, his accomplishments, and his failures. It told how he was conservative on some things and liberal on others.
As Governor, and this really wasn't too different than when he was President, he worked for prison reform, education, climate and preserving land, childcare, hunger, and more. But he also was ok with the death penalty for some cases.
As President, he was before his time in climate change. He put solar panels on the White House. (Of course ignorant Reagan took them down!) The only big problem he had was one of his main advisors was accused of cooking the books and the rest of his staff made the guy resign. After the trial, he was proven innocent. Roy Cohn later was the one that started it all to bring shame on Carter's legacy. Carter's popularity went down due to that.
He was working on the high inflation, about had it going in the right direction but not in time to save his election bid, and he should've cut defense spending and focused more on internal development. But the was no wars but a hostage situation at the end of his term, again due to interference.
Overall, Carter manage to get the Panama deal, and several more international issues started or completed. Social security running well. Other major accomplishments we take for granted today. He tried to get a universal healthcare but couldn't get it through. Obama's healthcare piggybacked off of Carter's.
Carter, in his later 90's, is still helping humanity. Still the honest, sweet man that did what he felt was right and didn't care what side of the political stick you were on.
This is a very informative and interesting look into a great man. It doesn't matter if you are a Democrat or Republican, this is a story of a solid citizen, too honest for politics, but he accomplished things anyway! Highly recommend!
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Lorna
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July 29, 2021
The Outlier: The Life and Presidency of Jimmy Carter was a well-researched biography of probably one of the most underestimated and misunderstood presidencies of our time. And I include myself in those in that quandry about President Carter's time in the White House and the valuable contributions that were made. One of my favorite southern writers is William Faulkner and he was also one of Carter's favorite novelists. Kai Bird alludes to the significance of this as follows:
"William Faulkner, later one of Carter's favorite novelists, described his homeland as a 'deep South dead since 1865 and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts.' Carter later read all of Faulkner's novels, and he said that 'on many occasions I've read them aloud to my children.' He thought Faulkner had captured the struggle between 'good and evil. . . perhaps better than any other Southern writer.' This Southern novelist, he said, understood the 'self-condemnation resulting from slavery, the humiliation following the War Between the States.' More than most white southerners, the rural folk of South Georgia had defied assimilation and loyally clung to their native culture as a matter of principle. They had their own vernacular and distinctive accent. And they had their own religion, an unvarnished evangelical southern Protestantism that affirmed the supremacy of the white race in society and patriarchy at home."
Jimmy Carter from the very beginning of his candidacy was an outsider and also an outlier in that he had no ties with the political elite in Washington, nor did he care. He came to power from the heart of the Deep South in 1976 on the heels of the scandalous Nixon presidency and the Watergate debacle as well as the gaping wounds in the nation from the disastrous Vietnam war. Jimmy Carter was not only a former Naval officer but a Calvanist at heart and determined to do what was right for the country with little consideration to the potential political consequences. But in that vein, he accomplished far more than most people give him credit.
"Taken together, Carter's early record on all these foreign policy issues--human rights, SALT II treaty, the Panama Canal treaties, and his decision to cancel an expensive weapons program like the B-1 bomber--suggested a president who was unafraid to take on major foreign policy issues, even as these achievements came with considerable political costs."
There are parts of this book that are heartbreaking as we see how hard his administration pushed for national health care insurance, a program ironically modeled closely after the Carter bill by Barack Obama three decades later with the introduction of his universal health care plan, as we know as 'Obamacare.' And for me the kicker was that Senator Edward Kennedy's refusal to support Carter's incremental, catastrophic national health insurance bill in 1978-1979 condemned the country to wait three decades for meaningful healthcare reform. And then of course there were the American hostages in Iran taken captive for 144 days as the Carter administration continued to work for their release, ironically achieved minutes after the inaugaration of Ronald Reagan as president.
Probably one of the single most far-reaching highlights of his presidency was the Camp David Accords where he brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin together for twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David resulting in political agreements signed on September 17, 1978. This resulted in a sea change in Middle Eastern politics prompting the disintegration of a united Arab front in opposition to Israel.
But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the dedicated ragtag Georgia boys that had been with Jimmy Carter during his governorship and now were in the White House in their blue jeans with very different and shocking ways to the Washington D. C. establishment, namely Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell. I think the author says it best:
". . . the Secret Service watched silently as a disheveled Jody Powell pushed his aging blue Volkswagon off the White House grounds and into the street. The fifteen year-old engine refused to start. It was a metaphor. The Georgia boys were done. But contrary to conventional wisdom offered by the Washington punditocracy, they left behind a consequential presidential legacy. Jimmy Carter changed the country."
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Bill
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June 22, 2021
Jimmy Carter is enjoying a real renaissance lately, as the subject of several new biographies and documentaries. It could be because enough time has passed that his presidency can now be analyzed as history, it could be because of his sheer longevity and status as the eldest of our elder statesman, or it could be because even a conventional “failed presidency” looks pretty good now compared to what we just lived through.
At any rate, it’s difficult not to compare Kai Bird’s biography with Jonathan Alter’s His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, the last major Carter biography that came out last year, and even Bird gives a hat tip to Alter’s work in his acknowledgments. I like reading multiple biographies of the same person to get different perspectives (says the guy who just read seven books in a row about Martin Van Buren), so I was interested to get Bird’s take on Carter. But I have to say, beat-by-beat, Bird’s and Alter’s works are substantially the same book, with many of the same emphases, the same anecdotes and the same structure - both offer dialogue-heavy, fly-on-the-wall, chronological, sympathetic portrayals of Carter's public life. There are, however, a few key differences, the main one being that Bird’s book is very good - but Alter’s is much better.
The main, obvious difference is that Bird chose to focus mostly on Carter’s presidency while Alter devotes more time to his full life story. To his credit, Bird doesn’t race through Carter’s upbringing and pre-presidency in a brief prologue - he devotes a good 100+ pages to it. While it’s not as satisfying as Alter’s longer treatment of this part of Carter’s life, it does help lay the foundation for the story of Carter’s presidency. That said, Bird looks at Carter’s upbringing mostly through the lens of race relations, which is an important part of his life story and political development, but equally important are his education and experience as an engineer and businessman, which aren’t explored as thoroughly.
Bird devotes the bulk of his book to Carter’s presidency, though I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what he did with all this extra space that Alter didn’t also thoroughly cover in 1/3rd fewer pages. Bird does sketch out fuller portraits of many of Carter’s staffers and Cabinet members, and provides more background leading up to major events like the Camp David summit and the Iran hostage crisis. And his telling of those events is excellent, particularly the dramatic, day-by-day tick-tock of the Camp David talks. Carter’s domestic struggles with the economy, the energy crisis and his tense relations with more liberal members of his party and the Democratic Congress are also well-covered (though curiously, Joe Biden only gets a couple of cursory mentions in the book, even though he was the first Senator to endorse Carter in 1976 - even slightly more space devoted to their relationship would have made the book just a little more timely).
Two drawbacks about Bird’s book really stood out to me, though. One, he never seems to question or fact-check some of the more colorful anecdotes he uses. Alter takes with a grain of salt some of the stories Carter relates in the many autobiographical books he's written. A story Carter tells in which, as a young businessman, he threatened to flush a $5 bill down the toilet instead of paying it as dues to a local white-supremacist business organization is described as “suspiciously colorful” in Alter’s book, as he notes that Carter included the story in only one of the three books in which he described the incident. But Bird relates the story as fact, with no attribution in the text and no skepticism.
Bird also relates without question Carter’s anecdote about his mother being surrounded by reporters and asked after his inauguration if she’s proud of her son, to which she cheekily responds, “Which one?” This question-and-retort has been attributed to many others prior to Miss Lillian, including Dwight Eisenhower’s mother, and I can find no reporting at the time that this exchange really happened on Inauguration Day, or any other time. A 1985 Helen Thomas column claims it happened during the campaign - it’s possible she created this legend and Carter ran with it and elided some of the details (he even tells the same story in slightly different ways in two of his books), but I question whether it happened at all. Bird doesn’t. And Alter, tellingly, doesn’t mention it.
Bird also tells the story of Carter getting on stage with Dizzy Gillespie to sing “Salt Peanuts” - but he tells it twice in the book, describing it as happening at two different events at two different times. It only happened once, but Carter conflated the two events in one of his books - so Bird does, too, even though by doing so, he ends up contradicting himself in his own book.
And in one of the most memorable parts of Carter's "malaise speech" in which he quoted "a southern governor" as telling him, “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation - you’re just managing the government," Bird misattributes that quote to Bill Clinton instead of South Carolina governor Richard Riley. Not only that, but he somehow combines several different comments from several different people into one long quote and attributes all of it to Clinton!
These are all small, relatively unimportant little stories in the grand scheme of things. But they illustrate Bird’s somewhat troubling tendency of taking people’s word for what happened, or picking up some "fact" from somewhere, without considering the source or bothering to double-check whether the accounts are really true. If he didn’t fact-check the small stuff, what are we to make of the more important stuff he writes about?
The second drawback of Bird’s book is laid out right in the prologue. “No modern president worked harder at the job and few achieved more than Carter in his one term in office,” he writes gushingly. Carter’s commitment to human rights “contributed more to the disintegration of the Soviet system than did Ronald Reagan’s reckless spending on Star Wars.” Etc., etc. At least Bird shows his hand and expresses his point of view right up front, but he could have been a little less hyperbolic in his praise. Alter’s portrayal of Carter’s presidency is sympathetic but fair - he credits Carter for his tangible achievements, and points out where he deserves credit for initiating programs or reforms that didn’t fully come to fruition until after he left the White House. But he also doesn’t hesitate to point out Carter’s missteps and shortcomings.
In Bird’s telling, Carter’s efforts are always underappreciated, his critics are always wrong, the press is always unfair, and everyone who judged his presidency to be a disappointment is simply mistaken. Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is portrayed as a Svengali who was responsible for many of Carter’s biggest missteps, and the irresponsible press was solely to blame for “the public perception of the Carter administration as weak and ineffectual.”
But perception is no small thing. Carter’s presidency cannot be dismissed as a complete failure, and both Alter and Bird rightly try to correct that. But his presidency also cannot be whitewashed as a great, unheralded success that America just didn’t appreciate at the time. It's true, after all, that Carter could be a micromanaging technocrat whose actions and words were often not persuasive or inspirational. The best leaders inspire you to do better, they don’t lecture you about what you’ve done wrong. They are strong in their convictions and don’t vacillate in their responses. And no one can be an effective leader if they can't persuade anyone to follow.
Alter acknowledges all of these faults. Bird excuses them. Alter’s book is a balanced biography that celebrates Carter’s successes but also helps you understand why his is not a celebrated presidency. Bird’s book is thorough, well-meaning and well-written but veers too close to hagiography in its conclusions, and he doesn’t really make a case in support of his subtitle describing Carter’s presidency as “unfinished”. Together with his troubling tendency to get simple facts wrong - even little things that an amateur like me was able to spot - these drawbacks keep his book from being excellent. It’s a very good read. But in the final analysis, Alter’s is simply better.
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Steve
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June 24, 2021
https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2021...
Kai Bird’s “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter” is the most recent full-length review of the life and legacy of the 39th president. Bird is a journalist and author who has written biographies of McGeorge and William Bundy, CIA operative Robert Ames and presidential adviser John McCloy. His co-written “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Although this book is the direct result of six years of research and writing, Bird has been intrigued with Jimmy Carter for nearly four decades. Drawing from the unpublished diaries of members of Carter’s presidential staff and his lawyer/adviser Charlie Kirbo, Bird is able to provide behind-the-scenes color unavailable in previous Carter biographies. But his thesis – that Carter was a more successful and decisive president than is generally recognized – is by now a fairly conventional perspective.
Bird’s writing style is straightforward and rarely flashy; he relies on well-articulated facts and embedded dialogue rather than descriptive scene-setting and literary flourishes to guide the reader. And although Bird’s emphasis is clearly on Carter’s presidency (consuming more than three-fourths of the 628-page narrative) he does devote meaningful attention to Carter’s upbringing and post-presidency.
Most readers will quickly notice Bird’s fondness for his subject. But if the author’s affinity for Carter is undeniable (and his praise consistently effusive) he is almost as quick to point out Carter’s peculiarities, flaws and shortcomings. On balance, however, Bird is notably forgiving of Carter’s faults and believes his presidential legacy has more room to rise.
One of this book’s greatest strengths is its consistently-thorough introductions to important supporting characters. Nearly everyone who plays an important role in Carter’s political life receives a robust, context-rich portrait. These are not quite as colorful as the “mini-biographies” featured in Robert Caro’s series on LBJ or in Adam Cohen’s review of FDR’s first 100 days, but they are invaluable in educating and engaging the reader.
Additionally, Bird provides an interesting chapter on Carter’s selection process for cabinet members and senior advisers, a fascinating review of Carter’s life in the White House and a colorful chapter on Carter’s relationship with his first speechwriter. Bird also provides a notably memorable chapter on the Camp David Accords and countless entertaining “fly on the wall” moments during Carter’s presidency. Finally, Bird’s observations in the book’s final pages regarding Carter’s legacy prove thoughtful.
But while this biography of Carter is quite good, it falls short of the standard set by Jonathan Alter’s “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life.” Bird’s biography is only slightly shorter, but devotes less than half the pages to Carter’s childhood, naval career and early political life that Alter provides. All the essential elements of Carter’s extraordinary climb are present in Bird’s narrative but his biography fails to include certain observations, anecdotes, context and nuances vital to fully capturing Carter’s persona.
And while Bird’s coverage of the Carter presidency is 150 pages longer than Alter’s, I cannot think of an important presidential moment missing in Alter’s treatment. But where both authors feel Carter’s presidential service is under-appreciated, Alter’s biography explores Carter’s strengths and weaknesses with equal fervor while Bird more frequently seems to excuse Carter’s most politically-problematic flaws.
Overall, Kai Bird’s “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter” is unquestionably good…but not quite great. Readers relying on this biography of Carter as a sole source of insight into his life will walk away with a solid understanding of his life and times. But in my view, Jonathan Alter’s book (published last fall) remains the undisputed “go to” biography of Jimmy Carter.
Overall Rating: 4 stars
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Dan
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February 11, 2024
4.5 stars
Kai Bird is most famous for his book on Oppenheimer called American Prometheus which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2006. The stakes are not quite as high in this recent biography about Jimmy Carter's life but this was a well researched book nonetheless and a good read.
It is interesting that many people who worked with Carter called him a Calvinist. I think that was an apt moniker. What was also true about Carter is that he was quite apolitical and of course this got him into a lot of trouble with the politicians in Washington. Many people misinterpreted his Southern pragmatism as a political tactic which it was not.
There is heavy focus in the book on the Iran hostage crisis with good reason as it took up nearly half his presidency and was the major reason he lost his reelection bid. But Carter is best known for his forty years of humanitarian work post-presidency and the Nobel Prize he received for this work. He bristled when people said his presidency was a failure because he felt he had always been the same hardworking honest person.
I wanted to end this brief review with a statement written by Carter's friend Anwar Sadat shortly before Sadat was assassinated. It is the most apropos anecdote about Carter in the book.
“Jimmy Carter is my very best friend on earth. He is the most honorable man I know. Brilliant and deeply religious, he has all the marvelous attributes that made him inept in dealing with the scoundrels who run the world.” - Anwar Sadat
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David
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October 3, 2023
The subject matter breakdown was not what I expected so I think it's important to share that information right off the bat:
19% is upbringing through governorship of GA (pages 1 - 120)
76% is JC's term as the 39th president (pages 121 - 598)
4% covers the post-presidency (pages 599 - 620)
1% is the epilogue (pages 621 - 627)
Bird's a very good biographer and no chapter was less than very good. I might have rated the book higher if there had been more about Carter's post-presidency. I'm a little oversaturated with stories of modern politics so I was a little less receptive to the political events of the era than I might normally be. But that doesn't mean they aren't important or interesting. The book details the bigger and lesser known events form 1977 - 1981. Note that fans of Henry Kissinger or Ronald Reagan or Ted Kennedy might want to skip this book.
I was in middle school when he took the oath of office so my sense of the man had mostly been shaped by his humanitarian acts beginning in the early 1980s and continuing for decades. Bird effectively portrays a complex man who accomplished far more in his one term than he's credited for. As honorable a man as Carter appears to be this is no hagiography. He still comes across as a very good man but maybe not as gentle or kindly as you might expect.
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Kifflie
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August 3, 2021
For me, this book started out strong, got a little bogged down in the middle, and recovered well at the end.
Those of us of a certain age remember the Carter Administration as well-meaning, but out of its depth, with the President's stubbornness and micro-managing style contributing to many of its failures. But Bird tries to show, with some success, that there were accomplishments as well -- on human rights, environmentalism, getting inflation under control, and securing peace between Israel and Egypt.
It's a good effort, even though I found the writing style a bit clunky, and some of the events hard to follow.
adult-nonfiction
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Zach
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December 30, 2024
I found this book by shopping for "Jimmy Carter biographies," and here I found this.
After trying to read a different Carter biography off and on for over a year (!), I thought the 39th president to still be interesting but was no fan of that book.
Went shopping for Carter biographies, and I found this gem by Kai Bird; Bird won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for his "American Prometheus" book nearly two decades ago.
I did not know how much I was in for a treat by stepping out of the box with this "Outlier."
Well-researched with strong use of citations and occasional use of footnotes, I possibly found some further reading material to supplement my interest not only of the Presidency but also more largely of US politics of the late 1970s.
"Outlier" avoids some pitfalls of some biographies -- obsessing over parts of someone's life excessively for dozens and dozens of pages. Bird mostly gets right to the point. He goes into just enough detail for my liking, with hardly inserting his thoughts or opinions of the matter at all.
It covers all of the bases as necessary - his time in the US Navy working on subs, his working relationship with Admiral Rickover, his run for Georgia state senate, both of his runs for Governor of Georgia, his 1976 campaign for the Presidency (and that year's campaign overall), his time in office including plenty of the 444-day Iranian hostage affair (I personally learned a good bit on this one), the differing views and approaches and of course the complete failure of the US intelligence community's assessment of Iran's impending revolution; unprecedented inflation, Ted Kennedy's now-infamous 1980 primary challenge; and of course the Reagan insurgency at the end of the day defeating Carter on that year's Election Day.
Something that Carter is probably more known for than being a former President has been his humanitarian work fighting diseases and building houses. His post-presidency has been nothing short of extraordinary.
It's also really important to understand how some of the work he accomplished in his single term is absolutely felt around the world today. 1993's Oslo accords would not likely have been possible without Carter's 13-day stint with the Camp David Accords. He set huge amounts of land for conservation in the Alaskan wilderness aside for conservation purposes. He was WAY ahead of his time on energy, and for a time tried to focus on his presidency's message on introducing renewable energy policy.
I think I met a former president that I found with a heart as big as mine - even if it cost him his re-election.
Thank you, Mr. Bird, for writing this book.
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Brandon Westlake
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February 15, 2021
Bird's book sheds light on the life, presidency, and post-presidency of one of our most recent overlooked presidents. The Outlier is detailed in scope; "comprehensive" is a good word to use in describing it. The central chapters of the book are his presidency, which the book views as the central part of his life (the first section is about before, then the third is after). Throughout all of these, we see Bird argue that Carter has always viewed himself and acted as an outlier. Being anti-establishment defines him; it forms his political philosophy and guides his religious beliefs.
Implicit in the book, is a thread that I found about this populist mindset. Recent populist politicians have been popular, but their goals don't align with Carter. These (unnamed, but known) politicians have consistently put themselves first, thinking about gaining or staying in office. Carter, viewed his populist, outlier mindset from a moral standpoint. The best and easiest example to see this is the pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers. Knowing it wasn't popular, he argued "it was the right thing to do." Forgiveness over ambition. Right action over personal attainment.
You don't have to agree with Carter's presidential decisions to appreciate him as a historical figure. Misunderstood at the time, maybe. He can be a guide, though, for us as we try to navigate the dark paths of political division in our country today
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