White House Diary

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. Sara Saunders (Author photograph). xv, [1], 570, [4] pages. Illustrations. Chronology. List of senior officials in the Carter administration. Index, slight wear/soil to DJ. Signed by the author. James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician and philanthropist who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a Georgia State Senator from 1963 to 1967 and as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. Since leaving the presidency, Carter has remained engaged in political and social projects as a private citizen. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in co-founding the Carter Center. Carter graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 with a Bachelor of Science degree and joined the United States Navy, where he served on submarines. After the death of his father in 1953, Carter returned home to Georgia to take over his family's peanut-growing business. His ambition to expand the Carters' peanut business was fulfilled. Carter became an activist within the Democratic Party. From 1963 to 1967, Carter served in the Georgia State Senate, and in 1970, he was elected as Governor of Georgia, defeating former Governor Carl Sanders in the Democratic primary on a platform advocating affirmative action. Carter remained as governor until 1975. Despite being a dark-horse candidate who was little known outside of Georgia at the start of the campaign, Carter won the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. Carter ran as an outsider and narrowly defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford. The personally annotated diary of President Jimmy Carter--filled with insights into his presidency, his relationships with friends and foes, and his lasting impact on issues that still preoccupy America and the world. Each day during his presidency, Jimmy Carter kept a private diary. In it, he supplied unvarnished assessments of cabinet members, congressmen, and foreign leaders, and narrated the progress of secret negotiations; he recorded his thoughts and his impressions of White House life, and chronicled the delights and the frustrations of occupying the world's most powerful political office. Yet this extraordinary document was never made public-until now. By carefully selecting the most illuminating entries, Carter provides us with an astonishingly intimate view of his presidency. Day by day, we see his forceful advocacy for nuclear containment, and his campaign for peace in the Middle East. Remarkably, thirty years after the fact, he has annotated the diary with candid reflections on the people and events that shaped his presidency, and on the many lessons he learned. Offering an unprecedented look inside both the man and his tenure, this fascinating book stands as a unique contribution to the history of the American presidency.