Rating: 
Summary: President Jimmy Carter writes yet another wonderful book....
Review: Any of you that have the chance to read this book, please do. It is about President Carter's childhood in Rural Georgia growing up. It tells about his entire family, his growing up/ and around black families working his father's land, and all the black friends he made early in life, and the wonderful influence they had on him throughout his life. It tells about how they planted, worked from dawn till dark with the "earth". If you are from the City, you especially need to read this book. It is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. I am super-impressed with it, and I have once again, learned things I never knew, I just love books that teach me, and this one has. There are so many parts in this book that will simply make you smile, some parts that will make you feel badly, and many parts that will teach you things. I really enjoyed every page of this book. I especially like books that teach, keep me happy while reading them, where I can't stand to lay them down, and where I actually hate for the book to end. This is one of those wonderful, wonderful books. This book is also so very easy to read, not filled with all those fat-filled words that so many writer's enjoy writing. This book is written for plain people, for all to enjoy. In my opinion, this book deserves a Pulitzer for Literature, because it has everything a book should have.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy the Audio Version - it's read by the author!
Review: I bought the Audio CD of this book, for use during my long commutes to and from work. The idea of having it read by the author intrigued me further. Although extremely soft spoken, I remember his verbal presense as powerful and moving during appearances in the media. I feel that I get a lot more from LISTENING to such personal experiences directly from the author, and his reading style is wonderfully soothing and subtle.
Rating:
Summary: A spendid voyage into a world that is unknown to most of us
Review: This is a fabulous book. As president, Jimmy Carter was criticized for excessive attention to detail. In this book, the details are what make the reading most rewarding. We are transported as if in a time machine to Depression era Plains, Georgia and learn things that we might otherwise never hope to know. If we ever run out of petroleum in this country and have to start doing things by hand again, this book will be a good starting point for recreating old farming techniques. I read the book "First Mothers: The Women who Shaped the Presidents" immediately before reading this book. That book had the thesis that the men who were elected president were much more strongly influenced by their mothers than their fathers. Carter's own account of his childhood gives little support for this thesis. The influence of his father seems much stronger, even though Carter says that he thinks that his brother was closer to his father than he was. His mother seems fairly absent because she is off attending to her nursing career. The one frustrating thing about the book is the fairly superficial description of the black sharecroppers who Carter says also influenced him very strongly. I particularly would have liked to have known more about the boy, A.D., who was Carter's best friend and who is only mentioned occasionally and then only in passing. I guess this comes from the difference between the ways in which men and women write. Men don't seem to get into these personal descriptions as much. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: He should have run again....
Review: After reading this book, I am sorry that Carter had only 4 years in the White House. What a man of compassion, integrity, and seneitivity. The book was a wonderful examination of his childhood and the events and circumstances that shaped his character, and a vivid picture of rural life in the south in the 1930's.
Rating:
Summary: A great view of the rural south.
Review: President Carter, a man known more for his politics and humanitarian acts than his childhood, uses this book to explain what made him the person he is and what motivates him. It was a great view at what constituted the life of people living in the south during the depression. A great book.
Rating:
Summary: Authentic and gripping tale of rural depression life
Review: This is the book that every baby boomer and Generation X-er should be required to read. Jimmy Carter provides a wonderfully vivid tale of southern rural depression life. The Carters and their neighbors were, by today's standard, fairly poor. They lived off the land, went barefoot most of the time, had no air conditioning and television. When they needed to go to town, most of the time their feet was the mode of transportation. As a child, the future president sold boiled peanuts on the streets of Plains, Ga,. He picked cotton, slaughtered hogs, milked cows, plowed fields, ate possum. In short, Jimmy Carter's early life was a hard one. Relatively speaking, however, the Carter's were wealthy, especially when compared to the destitute black sharecroppers and day workers who farmed their land. Carter's beautifully written book should serve as a reminder to us all how easy it is to take life's 21st Century comforts for granted and how soft and privileged the American middle class really is. He helped me understand the world in which my father grew up and also made me proud of my country that someone with the humble beginnings of a Jimmy Carter could still be elected president.
Rating:
Summary: Describes the Great Depression era with accuracy
Review: This is a book about Jimmy Carter's boyhood in rural Georgia during the years of the Great Depression, the entirety of which took place during the years of the first three Roosevelt administrations, although it is usually blamed upon Herbert Hoover, who preceded him in office. I am a lifelong Republican, and rarely find anything to like about a prominent Democrat--particularly a Democrat president-- but I must admit to a strong liking for Jimmy Carter. He was, very apparently, a thoroughly decent man and it shows in this book. Perhaps I like him because his background is so similar to my own, although his was in rural Georgia--the son of a farmer--while mine was in Oregon--the son of a logger. And also the life he describes would not have been considered upper middle class in Oregon, as he suggest it was in Georgia, but rather lower down the scale. His description of the details of life seems absolutely accurate, for the last generation to grow to adulthood without the benefits(?) of television. One of the very interesting incidents he tells about is an uncle in the Navy who was stationed on Guam at the outbreak of the war, and was subsequently captured by the Japanese. His beautiful wife and two children left their home in San Francisco to stay with the Carters in Plains, where she received word that her husband had died in captivity. So, she returned to San Francisco where eventually she re-married. But, her husband had not died, although he was half-starved and had lost 100 pounds.. After the war he returned home. When she discovered that he still lived, his wife immediately had her marriage annulled, but the Carter women persuaded him, in his diminished state, that she had committed adultery (by re-marrying) and so he divorced her. Carter tells the story without judgmental comment. During the Depression we lived under similar conditions to those he describes: I've lived in houses without indoor plumbing or electricity, where we used the Sears & Roebuck catalog for toilet paper in the outhouse, as did he. We are of a similar age, and many of the conditions he describes were endemic in the United States at that time. He describes one of the early moves of the Roosevelt administration-to plow under a quarter of the cotton crop, and kill and burn 200,000 young hogs (shoats) in order to raise prices, at a time when huge numbers of people were starving. His father, a Democrat, never forgave Roosevelt for that policy, and never again voted for him. Nor did he ever like the "New Deal." Mr. Carter also discusses other inequities and difficulties with the federal bureaucracy as it incrementally intruded into private citizens' lives, but, again, non-judgmentally. But, mainly this book is not about politics. It is about a young boy, and young man, growing up in the rural South at a time before racial animosities were stirred up, but while a definite class system existed and the only class lower than the blacks in the South (where I also lived during that time) were the "poor white trash." Jimmy Carter writes explicitly and, I'm sure, truthfully. Joseph Pierre
Rating:
Summary: A President Comes of Age.
Review: Using a journalist's eye, and introspect's heart, Jimmy Carter tells a warm and compelling tale of the times, places and people who shaped his life.
Humbly examining the elements of his youth, Jimmy Carter recounts his earliest impressions of segregation, politics, and life and death. Jimmy Carters style is natural and compelling, and his honest appraisal of his families past is both frank and welcoming. Clearly a man of great humilty, Jimmy Carter appraises his actions in the face of racism, expressing both pride and regret, he never blames his failings on anyone, or anything, but his own lack of understanding. In the latter chapters of this book, Jimmy Carter closes in on his incompleted relationship with his stern but loyal father - a relationship that both shaped and confounded him. This book is a wonderfully paced read, with the selfeffacing warmth of a Jean Shepherd tale wrapped around the sepia toned history of one of America's greatest living leaders. This is a great read.
Rating:
Summary: A vivid memoir
Review: I was excited to see 'An Hour before Daylight' anounced in the New York Times. I can only say that it is one of the best books about America I have read in a long time. In a sense it is not even about America, but belongs to that rare class of books that actually make you feel, smell and taste America. It proves that to an astute observer a small place like Plains can be as rich and interesting as a big city. I can only regret that I was not as observant when I grew up in a small town, but there is still a lot that I recognize in the book as it is. I really hope Mr. Carter will find time to write a sequel about the 50's and 60's. The real value of this book seems to me, that after a few pages I almost forgot it was about a future President, and was just absorbed. This is a great book in it's own right, a personal and historical document of the first order, never mind who wrote it. The National Park Service has done an excellent job in making Plains a national historic landmark, but it is 'An Hour before Daylight' that really saves Plains and its people from oblivion and restores them to life in a way the preservation of buildings can never achieve. Apart from W.T.Sherman's memoirs I do not know any memoir of life in America that is as vivid and detailed as this one.
Rating:
Summary: Ever spend a summer barefoot?
Review: If you did, this book is a must. I downloaded the President reading his book from Audible.com to play on my MP3 player. It's like having him drive along with you and recount his adventures. You won't be disapointed in getting this special insight into a very decent man (and I voted for both Ford and Reagan).
|
