The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter

“That is superior historical past, fantastically researched and marvelously written.”—Douglas Brinkley, New York Occasions bestselling creator of American Moonshot

4 many years after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is commonly labeled a failure; certainly, many Individuals view Carter as the one ex-president to have used the White Home as a stepping-stone to higher achievements. However looking back the Carter political odyssey is a wealthy and human story, marked by each formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. On this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize–profitable biographer Kai Hen expertly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping level in American historical past.

As president, Carter was not merely an outsider,; he was an outlier. He was the one president in a century to develop up within the coronary heart of the Deep South, and his born-again Christianity made him probably the most overtly spiritual president in reminiscence. This outlier delivered to the White Home a uncommon mixture of humility, candor, and unnerving self-confidence that neither Washington nor America was able to embrace. Many years earlier than at this time’s public reckoning with the huge gulf between America’s ethos and its actions, Carter appeared out on a nation torn by race and demoralized by Watergate and Vietnam and prescribed a radical self-examination from which voters recoiled. The price of his unshakable perception in doing the precise factor could be dropping his re-election bid—and witnessing the ascendance of Reagan.

In these outstanding pages, Hen traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive home agenda to his controversial international coverage report, taking readers contained in the Oval Workplace and thru Carter’s battles with each a political institution and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as any international energy. Hen exhibits how points nonetheless hotly debated at this time—from nationwide well being care to rising inequality and racism to the Israeli-Palestinian battle—burned on the coronary heart of Carter’s America, and consumed a president who discovered an ethical responsibility in fixing them.

Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration and not too long ago declassified paperwork, Hen delivers a profound, clear-eyed analysis of a pacesetter whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood.
The Outlier is the definitive account of an enigmatic presidency—each because it actually occurred and as it’s remembered within the American consciousness.