President jimmy carter biography book tour

Jimmy Carter was a man of high principle, steadfast integrity, and deep religious faith who dedicated his life to public service. As private citizen and public official he pursued the causes of human rights, peace, and care for the least fortunate with passionate determination and boundless energy.

Throughout his life, he repeatedly placed what he believed to be right above personal and political considerations. His quiet voice and ready smile masked a bulldog determination and an aversion to compromise on matters of principle.

In his 1977 inaugural address, President Carter quoted the prophet Micah: “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” For many who knew and worked with him, those words aptly summarize his life of faith and service.

Jimmy Carter grew up on a farm near the small town of Plains in southwest Georgia and graduated from the United States Naval Academy. As an officer serving in the Navy’s elite nuclear submarine program, he planned a career in the military. Those plans were cut short by his father’s death when, inspired by the many tributes to his father’s contributions to individuals and the community, he decided to return home. After a few difficult years, the family farm and business prospered, and his interests turned again to public service.

He won election as a Georgia state senator in 1962 and 1964 and as governor in 1970. As was to be the case in his presidency, Jimmy Carter’s service in those two offices was marked by the determination to engage difficult and controversial issues—including racial discrimination and government waste—and do what he felt was right regardless of political consequences.

Jimmy Carter rose from virtual political obscurity in 1976 to win election as the 39th president of the United States. He led an extremely a

39th President of the United States and Founder of The Carter Center

Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.), thirty-ninth president of the United States, was born Oct. 1, 1924, in the small farming town of Plains, Georgia, and grew up in the nearby community of Archery. His father, James Earl Carter, Sr., was a farmer and businessman; his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse.

He was educated in the public school of Plains, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to the rank of lieutenant. Chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program, he was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine.

On July 7, 1946, he married Rosalynn Smith of Plains. When his father died in 1953, he resigned his naval commission and returned with his family to Georgia. He took over the Carter farms, and he and Rosalynn operated Carter's Warehouse, a general-purpose seed and farm supply company in Plains. He quickly became a leader of the community, serving on county boards supervising education, the hospital authority, and the library. In 1962 he won election to the Georgia Senate. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, but won the next election, becoming Georgia's 76th governor on January 12, 1971. He was the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional and gubernatorial elections.

President Jimmy Carter
On Dec. 12, 1974, he announced his candidacy for president of the United States. He won his party's nomination on the first ballot at the 1976 Democratic National Convention and was elected president on Nov. 2,

Always a Reckoning
by Jimmy Carter

In this moving, wide-ranging, and intensely personal collection of poems — his first — President Jimmy Carter opens to us his very private and reflective world. Always a Reckoning is sparked with wry and sometimes bitter humor, warmed with tenderness, and glowing with an intense and passionate caring that is born of an awareness both political and sensual.

(Hard cover only) 128 pages; Dimensions 8, 5 1/2, 1 inches

Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease and Building Hope
by Jimmy Carter

This is the story of President Jimmy Carter's post-presidency, the most admired and productive in the nation's history. Through the Carter Center, which he and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982, he has fought neglected diseases, waged peace in war zones, and built hope among some of the most forgotten and needy people in the world.

(Hard cover only) 272 pages; Dimensions 9 1/2, 6 1/2, 1 inches

Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East
by Jimmy Carter

Since his earlier days in the White House, Jimmy Carter has demonstrated an untiring passion for pursuing peace in the Middle East. His formation of the Carter Center and his continuing prominent role in world affairs have done nothing to dampen that passion. In this new edition of a national bestseller, President Carter demystifies the history of each nation's political expectation, the reasons for their different goals, and the nature of their prime concerns. His landmark study provides an enlightened and reconciling vision for all-Jews, Moslems, and Christians-who share the blood of Abraham.

(Soft cover only) 243 pages; Dimensions 6 1/2, 5 1/2, 1 inches

A Call to Action
by Jimmy Carter

President Carter was encouraged to write this book by a wide coalition of leaders of all faiths. His urgent report covers a system of discrimination that extends to every nation. Women are deprived of e