Volume 27, Number 5 · April 3, 1980
The Best?
By C. Vann Woodward
The President Who Failed: Carter Out of Control
by Clark R. Mollenhoff
Macmillan, 264 pp., $10.95
Jimmy Carter: A Character Portrait
by Bruce Mazlish, by Edwin Diamond
Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $11.95
Both of these books were out of date before they were published. This misfortune is attributable not so much to the shortcomings of their authors as to the hazards of the race they entered, the familiar race of the presses and the journalists to keep pace with events. The inevitability of losing the race rarely discourages the runners—nor should it. It is a smug historian who would advise them to wait until the subject of biography cools in the grave. If they rush to judgment on this particular subject, so of necessity must the American electorate. And the events with which the runners failed to keep pace suggest that the judgment required of the electorate may be more momentous than the runners had any reason to suspect. Light on the Enigma from Georgia in the White House—refracted, colored, outdated, or distorted though it may be—can be of importance.
Review, 2891 words
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