A Full Life Book Summary - A Full Life Book explained in key points

A Full Life summary

Name: A Full Life
Rating: 4.4 (28 reviews)
Author: Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter

Reflections at Ninety

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A Full Life
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What’s in it for me? Get insight into the life that formed a US president.

Today, the person holding the office of US president is viewed as the most important and powerful person on the planet. It’s easy to think of American presidents as elite people, born into well-educated or wealthy families, trained at the premier schools and universities, or gaining influence as captains of industry. Sometimes, however, the story changes.

The man who would become President Carter came from a different place altogether. Jimmy, as people referred to him then, rose out of the soil of the South, prior to the civil rights movement. In these blinks about his life, we will find out how this background shaped his ideas and principles as he climbed through the political ranks to the highest office in the United States.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

how coming from one of two white families in his community formed his views on racial inequality;
how Hunter S. Thompson helped get Carter on the national scene; and
how Carter normalized the United States’ relationship with China.

Jimmy Carter grew up on a farm in America’s Deep South.

Jimmy Carter had a humble start in life. He was born in 1924 in Plains, South Georgia – population 500. Soon after his birth his parents moved to a farm, where his three siblings would later be born.

The Carter family owned land in a community near Plains called Archery, with a population of about 200, and rented portions of their land to local families. They farmed cotton, corn and peanuts among other crops.

Carter grew up working in the field, learning to make his own toys and even selling the peanuts he harvested, packing them in small paper bags and then pedaling them to the train station and around the neighborhood. At the age of only five, Carter began his first job helping his father, James Earl Carter, with blacksmithing.

Carter’s parents were well-respected by the community. He revered his father, who was a talented and self-sufficient man. James Earl was a church deacon, a member of the board of education and dedicated to developing education statewide.

Besides farming and running a warehouse business, James Earl was quite industrious: he had learned shoemaking, carpentry and blacksmithing, and also sold homemade ketchup, sausage and dairy products.

His mother, Bessie Lillian Gordy, was a registered nurse who often treated patients without the aid of a doctor, sometimes working 20-hour days in their homes. During the Great Depression, she accepted payment in whatever form her patients could afford, be that eggs, chickens or yard work, and never treated anyone differently based on what they had.

Work on the farm was a family affair for the Carters, something that Jimmy would later rely upon in his campaigns.

Early in his childhood, Carter saw racial inequality all around him.

Life on a farm wasn’t the only thing that shaped Jimmy Carter’s upbringing. He grew up in the segregated South, where schools and churches were divided by race. At that time, African Americans couldn’t even vote. Slowly, young Jimmy began to see how unjustly African Americans were treated in the United States.

The Carters were one of only two white families in Archery. Consequently, Jimmy Carter had close friendships with African Americans. All of his childhood friends were black, though he felt especially close to his neighbors Jack and Rachel Clark, and often slept over at their house.

Carter enlisted in the navy to receive a college education and ended up having a successful career.

Carter’s parents wanted him to go to college, but money was hard to come by. So, he aspired to study at West Point as an army recruit or as a navy midshipmen at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, as both schools had free tuition and board – contingent upon serving in the military after graduation.

In 1943, after two years at a local college, Carter finally got into Annapolis, where he would begin a successful navy career.

After 11 years in the navy, Carter returned to the farm and became closely involved in the community.

Carter achieved everything he had hoped for after enlisting in the navy: a good education and a successful career. But the death of his father would change everything.

Carter returned to Plains after his father died from pancreatic cancer in 1953. There, he resigned from the navy and decided to take over his father’s responsibilities and emulate him.

Carter fought for education and racial equality as Georgia’s senator and later governor.

So what would motivate a peanut farmer to try his hand at politics? In Carter’s case, the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Carters were Democrats, an increasingly unpopular choice in the Deep South after the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education made segregation in schools illegal.

Carter became 39th president of the United States in 1977.

During his tenure as governor, Carter decided that it was time to run for president. He knew that because he was relatively unknown nationwide, he had an uphill battle ahead. So, he took care to prepare well.

Carter got a head start by coordinating campaigns for other Democratic candidates. The National Democratic Party chairman asked Carter to be responsible for the party’s campaigns for the 1974 elections, and though Carter was planning to run for president, he kept it secret, learning as much as he could with his newfound responsibility.

As president, Carter successfully normalized relations with the communist Chinese government.

One of the first things Carter did as president was to address the long-standing issue of China. After WWII, two different governments claimed to represent the citizens of China: the communists and the republicans. Mao’s communist forces had forced the republicans to retreat from the mainland to the island of Taiwan, where they represented the Republic of China (ROC). Both sides claimed international recognition and denied the legitimacy of the other.

Cold War politics meant that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was America’s enemy by default. This, combined with the United States’ strong commercial ties to Taiwan, meant the United States only recognized the ROC. Carter believed that the PRC should represent the Chinese people, but found it equally important to approach a complex situation with peace as the ultimate goal.

Carter was able to mediate a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

Continuing his mission to resolve international conflicts without violence, President Carter often sent family members and important government representatives around the world to promote peace. He himself mediated some key negotiations, including some in the Middle East.

Carter became increasingly interested in creating lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. While he met with their various leaders on numerous occasions, none were willing to budge.

After stepping down from the presidency, Carter became a professor at Emory University and a writer.

When the time came for his re-election, Carter’s greatest opponents were Ted Kennedy from his own Democratic Party and the Republican Ronald Reagan. Although he won the first battle, he lost the second.

Carter attributes his defeat to a failed rescue attempt in Iran in 1980. In November of the previous year, a group of US citizens were taken hostage by Iranian militants supported by their government. When diplomacy failed to facilitate their release, Carter gave the go-ahead for a rescue mission on 11 April 1980.

Carter and his wife founded the Carter Center in 1982 to continue building a better, more peaceful world.

Carter believed so strongly in making a difference that he found a way to continue his vision even without the powers of the presidential office: the Carter Center.

The Carter Center began while Carter was trying to raise funds for a presidential library. But one night Carter awoke with an idea and called Rosalynn to tell her about it, saying he wanted to create something like Camp David – a place where he could offer his mediation to resolve or prevent international conflicts.

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What is A Full Life about?

A Full Life (2015) is former president Jimmy Carter’s most recent autobiography, in which he recounts his formative experiences. From peanut farmer in the Deep South to the 39th president of the United States, the 90-year-old Nobel Peace Prize recipient recounts the issues that remain most important to him, including human rights and world peace.

Best quote from A Full Life

I still felt more at home in Archery with my black friends, with whom I spent my late afternoons and school vacation.

—Jimmy Carter

Who should read A Full Life?

History buffs interested in 1970s US international relations
Anyone interested in post-war racial inequality and civil rights in the American South
Anyone interested in Nobel Peace Prize recipients

About the Author

Jimmy Carter, a former senator and governor from Georgia, became US President in 1977, later earning a Nobel Peace Prize. He is a distinguished professor at Emory University and a major contributor to Habitat for Humanity. He continues to strive for international peace and human rights through his foundation, the Carter Center. Carter has published 28 books to date.

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Biography & Memoir Politics

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