Volume 24, Number 7 · April 28, 1977
Reading the Carter Riddle
By Garry Wills
The Search for Jimmy Carter
by Tom Collins
Word Books, 192 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Running for President 1976: The Carter Campaign
by Martin Schram
Stein and Day, 406 pp., $11.95
How Jimmy Won: The Victory Campaign from Plains to the White House
by Kandy Stroud
William Morrow, 442 pp., $10.95
Convention
by Richard Reeves
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 246 pp., $10.00
We Almost Made It
by Malcolm D. MacDougall
Crown, 244 pp., $8.95
The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians: A Revisionist History
by David Leon Chandler
Doubleday, 394 pp., $10.00
There is something about Jimmy Carter that makes journalists want to change the subject. No candidate has been so extensively covered, yet so ill described. We largely get repeated stories about his 'conversion,' his red-necking in 1968, his ethnic purity in 1976. Plus, of course, his family. Already the canonization begins in a literate picture book like The Search for Jimmy Carter, which describes him early on as 'the man from South Georgia who refused to lie down and settle for the vicepresidency as a ticket-balancer.' I wrote an article in the spring of 1972 saying he meant to balance the McGovern ticket, and he told me in Miami that was the only thing about my piece he didn't like. It was the only thing I wasn't sure of at the time—but it has been confirmed by Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell since then.
Review, 2262 words
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