White House Diary

Locations
Call Number: 973.926 Ca
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	973.926 Ca	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Includes index.
A chronology of my White House years -- Senior officials in my administration -- The campaign -- 1977 -- 1978 -- 1979 -- 1980 -- 1981 -- Aftermath.
The edited, annotated diary of President Jimmy Carter--filled with insights into his presidency, his relationships with friends and foes, and his lasting impact on issues that still preoccupy America and the world.

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Library Journal Review
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Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

White House Diary submitted by emjane on July 14, 2012, 8:55pm White House Diary is an absolutely enormous book that collects the daily diary entries that Carter made during his years as president. The book is massive, but only contains about a quarter of the entries Carter made—which was a relief; the book is long enough as is. Occasionally, between entries, present-day Carter makes clarifying comments, but generally the entries stand for themselves.

The events that took place during the Carter administration are in my “black hole of history” (they happened before I was born, but after the farthest I got in history class). In that sense, reading White House Diary was a good thing for me. However, especially in the “first year” of the book, it was difficult to become engaged. The problem with the diary entry format is that almost all entries consist of daily activities (like, spoke with Jody, swam with Amy), which gets pretty dry. Though it got more exciting in the later years when the presidency started facing bigger issues (and boy were there a lot of them in the last few years), I still would’ve rather read a biography on the period. In fact, many times while reading, I thought, “this would be a great resource for a biographer.”

The best part of the book is the afterword, where Carter discusses mistakes he made and things he would have done differently in his presidency. In it (and, throughout the whole book, really) Carter struck me as an intelligent, modest, good man.