BONUS: A biography and a memoir reexamine Jimmy Carter's extraordinary life

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4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Former president Jimmy Carter has died. He was 100 years old. In today's episode, two books examine Carter's career in the White House and beyond. First, NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with historian Kai Bird about The Outlier, a biography that argues that Carter's deregulation of several industries, his social legislation and his foreign policy made his one-term presidency exceptionally productive. Then, a conversation from the vault between NPR's Eric Westervelt and Carter himself about his memoir, A Full Life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Former president, Jimmy Carter,
0:06.8	has died. He had a long life, and he leaves behind a really interesting and complex legacy
0:11.9	in both what he accomplished and how we think about him today. Carter wrote a book that came out in
0:17.7	2015 that looked back on his early life and his political career. But before we hear from the man himself, I want to play this interview that takes a book that came out in 2015, that looked back on his early life and his political career.
0:21.8	But before we hear from the man himself, I want to play this interview that takes a bird's-eye
0:25.6	view of his presidency. It's from 2021, and it's between NPR Steve Inskeep and historian Kai Bird,
0:32.0	who wrote a book called Jimmy Carter, the outlier. And in it, he argues that, contrary to popular opinion, Carter
0:38.8	actually got a lot accomplished in the short time he was in office. Here it is after the break.
0:45.1	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts,
0:51.9	diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:56.3	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:00.9	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:04.0	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:09.2	A biographer of Jimmy Carter would like you to reconsider his presidency.
1:14.5	People sort of make a joke of the fact that Jimmy Carter is the only president to have
1:20.1	used the Oval Office as a stepping stone to doing greater things.
1:24.6	Kai Bird knows Carter is considered the greatest post-president. Since leaving office,
1:29.8	Carter has observed elections, spoken for human rights, hammered nails to build houses for
1:34.1	habitat for humanity, and taught Sunday school far into his 90s. The conventional wisdom calls
1:40.2	Carter's actual presidency a failure. The man from Plains, Georgia, served a single term,
1:45.8	elected in 1976, defeated in 1980. Bird's book The Outlier insists on a closer look at those four
1:53.5	years. I would argue he was the hardest working president we had in the 20th century,
	...

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