12/30/2024
When he left office in January 1981, Jimmy Carter was only 56. He had the title “former president” for almost 44 years—more than a decade longer than Herbert Hoover, who had the second-longest post-presidency. He used the time well, founding the Carter Center to promote peace, health and human rights around the world; building houses for Habitat for Humanity International; teaching Sunday school; and writing some 30 books, many of which are in the NLS collection.
Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, gave a definitive account of his four years in the White House in “Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (DB18686).” He shared his views on religious fundamentalism, the environment and other topics in “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (BR16262, DB61249).” In “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (DB83306),” Carter discussed his youth in rural Georgia, his family, his military service, his decision to enter politics and more. Carter also wrote the first work of fiction by a former president—“The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (DB57352)”—and a collection of poetry, “Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems (BR09887, DB40426).”
The NLS catalog also includes several in-depth biographies of the 39th president, including “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (DB102429)” by Jonathan Alter and “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey beyond the White House (DB47796)” by Douglas Brinkley, which focuses on Carter’s post-presidential humanitarian work. Much of that work was in service to Habitat for Humanity, and Carter wrote the foreword to Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford’s “Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World (DB97100).”
Find more books by and about Jimmy Carter in our online minibibliography: www.loc.gov/nls/new-materials/book-lists/jimmy-carter?loclr=fbnls.
[Image: Carter, then 92, teaching Sunday School at the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, in 2017. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.]
