Book SummaryHis Very Best, by Jonathan Alter

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of His Very Best

Jimmy Carter isn’t remembered as one of America’s greatest presidents, but in his years away from public office, he’s come to be revered for his work as a humanitarian. The problem with this narrative about Carter’s life is that it downplays the vital, groundbreaking work he did in Washington and falsely colors the history of his presidency by focusing on the hardships America suffered during that time and not the positive, far-reaching effects of what Carter accomplished while serving in the White House.

In His Very Best, published in 2021, Jonathan Alter presents another perspective on the complicated history of the person he suggests is one of the US’s most underrated presidents. He portrays Carter as a man of contradictions—personable yet cold, charitable yet judgmental, humble yet ambitious. Alter depicts Carter as deeply principled yet politically short-sighted in a way that led him to achieve great things while simultaneously undermining his legacy.

Alter is a historian, filmmaker, political analyst, and former editor for Newsweek. In...

His Very Best Summary Formative Years

Carter had one of the most humble beginnings of any modern US president. His rural background and strict upbringing planted the seeds of discipline, honesty, and compassion for others that would grow to define him later in life. Alter describes Carter’s early life in a world much different from today’s while detailing how the values of Carter’s parents and those of the US Navy, where Carter served, shaped his outlook and personality.

James Earl Carter was born in 1924 in the town of Plains, Georgia, where there was no electricity or running water in his family’s home. Young Carter grew up working shoulder-to-shoulder with the African-American laborers his father employed on their farm. It was a time of strict racial segregation, yet during the early years of his life, Carter’s family were the only white people he knew. When he started school, Carter’s white classmates mocked him for speaking with an African-American accent.

(Shortform note: Plains, in Georgia’s southwestern quarter, was founded in 1827 on land taken from the Muskogee (Creek) Nation but...

His Very Best Summary Carter the Politician

Feeling hampered by the hardline conservatism that dominated Plains, Carter felt drawn to the political world where he might sway policies in a direction that aligned with his more progressive values. In 1962, a landmark Supreme Court case (Baker v. Carr) forced a restructuring of legislative districts that opened a path for political moderates like Carter to seek office in rural, conservative regions of the country. Nevertheless, to win the backing of voters beyond the circle of his small-town connections, Carter would have to straddle the line between liberals and conservatives. Alter describes how Carter rose to office through a series of political victories and losses that led him to redefine his Christian faith on the way to becoming governor of Georgia.

(Shortform note: In Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court ruled that states must periodically redraw legislative districts to be equivalent to the population represented. Prior to Baker v. Carr, Georgia’s districts gave more representative power to conservative rural counties than to liberal urban centers like Atlanta. The Supreme Court ruling didn’t alter liberal...

His Very Best Summary Carter for President

Just as he eyed the governorship while serving in the Georgia State Senate, Carter turned his ambitions to the presidency while serving his term as governor. Carter’s homespun values of honesty and integrity came as a breath of fresh air in the cynical 1970s and made his longshot candidacy a viable bid for the White House. Carter leveraged the disillusionment voters felt after the Watergate scandal to present himself as a Washington outsider—an honest man of faith who’d restore the nation’s dignity. Coupled with strategic campaigns in crucial regions of the country, this strategy would win Carter a narrow victory over incumbent President Gerald Ford.

The Watergate Scandal

The Watergate Scandal that opened the door to Carter’s long-shot presidential campaign began in 1972 when agents of President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign were caught stealing documents and attempting to wiretap the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington, DC. Nixon denied any connection with the break-in and won reelection, though...

His Very Best Summary Carter the Reformer

Carter had campaigned on a promise to correct the course of government, and as soon as he entered office he put that promise into action. Though many of his choices proved unpopular in the short term, Alter contends that Carter enacted many governmental improvements that remain undervalued in the common narrative of his presidency. The lasting changes Carter implemented involved reshaping the administration of the executive branch, taking steps to address US energy policy, and bringing diversity to the judiciary.

(Shortform note: The US government is divided into three co-equal branches—the legislative branch (Congress) that writes and passes laws, the executive branch (headed by the President) responsible for enacting laws and government policy, and the judicial branch (headed by the Supreme Court) which interprets law and on occasion overturns it. US Presidents such as Carter cannot create laws on their own, but they have the power to approve or veto laws passed by Congress as well as to [appoint judges and other government...

His Very Best Summary Carter the Diplomat

On the global stage, Carter distinguished himself as a president who would eschew the use of military strength except as a last resort. Instead, he prioritized maintaining and promoting peace at any cost, including political damage to himself. While Carter’s presidency included dramatic successes such as averting a military crisis in the Panama Canal and negotiating a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt, his legacy was ultimately marred by his response to the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis, which we’ll discuss in a later section.

Alter writes that Carter was determined to do the right thing regardless of the political consequences. A prime example of this was giving Panama control of the Panama Canal, which by treaty belonged to the US forever. Perpetual American control of the canal bred anti-US resentment in Panama and neighboring countries that threatened to erupt into violence. Had it done so, the US would have been forced to defend the canal and all the traffic through it in a conflict that might have eclipsed the Vietnam War in scope and duration. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford had all broached the topic of transferring ownership of the...

His Very Best Summary The Iran Hostage Crisis

While Carter was achieving a measure of success negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt, the political situation in Iran was deteriorating faster than anyone in the US realized. The Iranian Revolution and the 444-day hostage crisis that followed would become for many people the defining historical event of Carter’s presidency, completely dominating his last year in office. Alter details the road to the crisis, Carter’s resistance to using military force, and the final push to free the hostages just as Carter’s presidency came to its end.

In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini gained a following as a fierce critic of Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran’s dictator since 1953, but the CIA never saw Khomeini as a serious threat to world peace. In 1978, the shah’s health began failing, and Khomeini’s supporters launched violent protests to demand the shah’s removal. Alter writes that when the shah asked the US for aid to prop up his regime, Carter refused, believing that without a dictator, Iran would return to democratic rule. Suffering from cancer, the shah went into exile in January 1979 to seek medical treatment abroad while Khomeini amassed power in his country.

(Shortform note: Carter’s hope...

His Very Best Summary Carter the Humanitarian

Unlike other ex-presidents, Carter didn’t retire from public life or cash in on his fame. Instead, he leveraged his status as a former head of state to further humanitarian causes around the world. Alter writes that Carter’s most strident efforts were in brokering peace with dictatorial regimes and promoting public health reform in developing nations. However, Alter says that despite the public perception of Carter’s work in later years, his time in the White House was far more impactful than any of his actions as a former president.

(Shortform note: The idea that Carter’s presidency is generally underrated is shared by several other biographers. In The Outlier, award-winning author Kai Bird argues that Carter was the hardest-working president of modern times and that he achieved more in office than some presidents who followed. In The Unfinished Presidency, historian Douglas Brinkly argues that Carter’s accomplishments in later years wouldn’t have been possible without the diplomatic groundwork he’d begun while in the White House. In...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on Jimmy Carter’s Life

Alter’s biography of Carter asks the reader to reevaluate the traditional narrative about Carter’s presidency—namely that he was a weak, ineffectual president who found redemption later in life as a global humanitarian. Taking into consideration the complexity of Carter’s life and times, think about how you might reappraise Carter’s legacy or that of any other well-known figure.

Alter says that Carter presented a conservative facade in order to win his earliest elections, which went against his stated value of integrity. Do you feel that Carter acted unethically, or do you believe his campaign tactics were justified? What current political leaders do you believe may employ a similar strategy?