Book Reviews
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed.” Francis Bacon (d. 1826)
Beyond the White House
Jimmy Carter, New York: Simon & Shuster, 2007. $26.
Reviewed by Darold Morgan,
Richardson, TX
One of the best-known Baptists in the world has written another book, and the scope of it is all but breath-taking! Jimmy Carter writes persuasively about what he and his wife, Rosalyn, and their colleagues have done though the Carter Center since his defeat as he sought in 1980 a second term as U.S. President. A major question surfaces early in reading the book—how on earth could one couple travel and accomplish as much as they have? No wonder Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006! He genuinely deserved this prestigious honor, and this book forcefully confirms the reason for it.
Both of the Carters talk frankly about the massive let-down after losing the presidential election to Ronald Reagan, complicated by the abysmal state of business affairs on their Georgia farms, and by the peculiar demands of what to do in Plains in a forced retirement mode. By the time one finishes reading the book, there is a beautiful agreement with Carter’s evaluation of these years: “By far, my best years are these I am enjoying now, since Rosalyn and I left the White House.”
Carter, as usual writes with skill and interest, highlighting both successes and failures in this multi-faceted array of projects the book outlines. There is an aura of unselfishness
as the Carters move around the world, monitoring elections, being deeply involved in seemingly endless projects of disease-control, eliciting massive financial support from major companies world-wide, and badgering reluctant leaders in dozens of countries for better understanding of the issues. Whenever bluntness and stubbornness are required to further the announced project, Carter exhibits the required consistency that most of the time engineers the necessary breakthrough. Of course, there are hints of bureaucrats, at home and abroad, who were deeply offended by the Carter approach to these problems. Included in this are major political and military leaders again in the U.S. as well as in countries where elections were anything but democratically carried out.
The use of the word, breath-taking, is deliberate. The Carters formed the Carter Center, which in reality is his presidential library, located in Atlanta. It has an exciting partnership with nearby Emory University. From the outset Carter viewed through this connection developing a concept of mediation, locally and world-wide, where “we might study and teach how to resolve or prevent conflict” (4). Twenty-five years later these countries have been influenced by this concept—Guyana, East Timor, Haiti, Mali, Burkina-Faso, Ethiopia, Niger, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Ghana, China, Indonesia—plus many other countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Add to this the Atlanta Project, Habitat for Humanity. Special attention needs again to be directed toward the Carters’ work in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One of the most moving segments in the book relates to the exciting and often successful ventures in some African countries as literally the two were “Fighting Diseases.” Enlisting skilled and competent associates through the Center, they often cajoled African political leaders to cooperate. Encouraging major drug companies to give massive amounts of urgently needed medicines, visiting personally dozens of areas where need defies description, both of the Carters demonstrate a blending of compassion, determination, stubbornness that is almost unequaled in international life today.
Forget your political commitments as you start this book. Let it speak for itself as you see what two people can do with commitment and concern. The Carters come through these pages as devout Christians who are trying to make a difference in a world clouded by untold numbers of people impaled by dread diseases—a world where too many countries are also crippled by corrupt government. The Carters tell how they were able to break that cycle, bringing healing to the sick and changing nations!
