American Experience

Jimmy Carter (2): Hostage

"Hostage," the conclusion of a two-part Jimmy Carter biography, covers his presidency and post-presidency. Human rights were to be "a basic tenet of our foreign policy," Carter declared in 1977, but he was overwhelmed by events in Iran, and economic woes at home led to a "malaise" so severe that the 1978 Camp David accords didn't even give him a boost in the polls. Then came the hostage crisis. But back in Plains, he and Rosalynn regrouped. And now? As former Carter speechwriter Henrdrik Hertzberg puts it: "His values, his devotion to human rights, keep on resonating in a way that his failures and weaknesses don't."