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White House Diary (2010)

by Jimmy Carter(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0374280991 (ISBN13: 9780374280994)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: It is interesting to read a book that offers some insight into the president's life like this does. Perhaps it would be more interesting to read the diary in its entirety as I suspect there are more frank comments of Carter's thoughts on people and events, but this book does contain a fair amount of such things, as well as more mundane details about not so presidential parts of life that often make for good entertainment. It also gives a good run through the major issues of the day during his term, and the thoughts he added following the diary entries as we was putting the book together are interesting as well.
review 2: President Carter has written prolifically since leaving office over 30 years ago, but most of this volume was written while he was in the Whi... morete House. The introduction and afterward put things in perspective as he qualifies some of the judgments made at the time the diary entries were recorded, and especially as he looks back self-critically to consider how he might have handled some things differently. He admits to not being a "natural politician," to having shunned Washington's social life in ways that hurt his reputation, and to failing to build a mutually trusting relationship with the press, which had become so cynical after Vietnam and Watergate. On the other hand, he still believes in most of what he tried to accomplish, and he explains convincingly that his administration accomplished far more than most people realize. He regrets that the presidents who followed him dismantled many of his achievements in the areas of conservation and the environment and working to keep the budget in balance. This is a book I can recommend to anyone as interested in American history as I am, and especially to anyone who wants to understand what took place in the late 1970s. less

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