This book was given to me with a bag of other books. I picked it up one day when I had left my other book in the car & I found it very interesting. Regardless of how one feels about Carter's politics, he is an extraordinary person and lived a very fulfilled life. It is a quick read but I only picked it up here and there so it took me a while to finish.

Five stars for this lovely little book chronicling President Carter's shared life experiences with those people lucky enough to be in his inner circle. He is a remarkable man who still, in his early 90's, is living an extraordinary life of service, intellectual stimulation, and love and companionship with his family and friends. I don't know if there is anyone I admire more.

Started good, then got boring.

I miss him.

Overall this is a good book. Jimmy Carter said his greatest accomplishment was his marriage. I agree. He pushed his wife too far sometimes. For example, he pushed Rosalyn to climb big mountains which made her sick and vomit. He put his personal ambitions above her a few times. Overall, they had a good marriage. People think of his Habitat for Humanity service but most of his charity was with The Carter Center. Carter only spent about one week per year with about 20 others doing Habitat. The Carter's helped get corruption out of elections in developing nations. Jimmy Carter was a peacemaker. He even went into North Korea and other hostile areas to seek peace. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." Matthew 5:9 The Carter's collaborated with farmers in developing nations to help them grow more crops. Jimmy Carter helped many people.

This is my first exposure to Jimmy Carter, other than memorizing his presidential years in grade school.
I enjoyed reading about his life. It felt like I was listening to stories from my Grandma. I'm encouraged to live an active life and to continue learning.

Good Advice from President Carter

Having read several of President Carter's other books, you will find some overlapping stories in this book. What I truly enjoyed was how he looked at these stories from a new perspective, sharing his feelings on spending good times with his wife, his family, and his friends in adventures around the world. He teaches people to make the most of the times that they share with each other, whether in business, pleasure, or a combination of these times. You will see how many things that President Carter enjoys doing. This is a good book and a pretty fast read. He is a good writer.

This was my first book by fromer President Jimmy Carter. Each chapter is another short essay of some of the pleasurable activities he and wife Rosalyn had had. Most were since leaving the White House. A lot of privledge follows a former president!

Fascinating look at President Carter's life, mostly after leaving the White House. You get a view into how he spent his time, especially with his family.

This is a concise biography from Carter, focusing on the good times had with family and friends over the years and across the globe. Along the way there is a refreshing, casual candor on encountering racism in his community and even sexism/patriarchy in his own marriage:

She continued walking and replied, "Do it yourself. I have to get my own things ready."
I was startled and angry, considering her dismissive response a personal insult. But having no alternative, I was forced to accept the result of this exchange, and during the following days I was able to consider our relationship more objectively. It was obvious that my wife also considered this a seminal change, and from then on we carved out an unprecedented concept of equality and mutual respect.

Our family teamwork in the campaign paid surprisingly rich dividends. By election day, we had shaken hands with several hundred thousand people, and I was elected governor. Since then, there has been no facet of our business, personal, or political lives that we haven't shared on a relatively equal basis. I have to admit, though, that on occasion, I long for the earlier days.

While most of the good times are outside fly-fishing, hunting, mountain climbing, seeking arrowheads, etc. the was some good times in the late '50s in jazz clubs:

One of our most memorable visits was to New Orleans, where I remember that our total bankroll was six hundred dol- lars. We found inexpensive hotel accommodations and spent most of our nights in the Bourbon Street and Royal Street nightclubs that had the best jazz performers. In one of them, we formed a special friendship with Billy Eckstine, and we later invited him to visit us in the White House. We had coffee and sweet rolls in the French Market early every morning before

going to bed to sleep until early afternoon. During two of our days, we obtained permission from the New Orleans Symphony manager to sit in the theater during their practice sessions, and on the other days we went to horse races and toured the cemeteries, waterfront, and other tourist attractions. We decided that we would splurge one night and have supper at Antoine's Restaurant, where we enjoyed pompano cooked in a paper bag (seven dollars) with potato slices that swelled up like small balloons. We then went to dance in the Blue Room above the Fairmont Hotel, and subsequently we would call long-distance from Plains to make special requests for our favorite songs.

In 1958 we drove to Miami, where Louis Armstrong was performing in the Fontainebleau Hotel, and we remember our astonishment when the stage rose from below the dance floor with him and his orchestra playing their initial song. While on the beach the next day, we made a spontaneous decision to go to Cuba and were soon on the way. We stayed in Havana for two days, casually noticing that the palace of the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, was surrounded by soldiers and stacked sand- bags and that many people were talking about a revolutionary lawyer named Fidel Castro, who was hiding in the hills. Since we had hotel rooms for only the first night, we spent the next one carousing in Havana and then flew without sleep to Miami the following day and drove back home.

The next year we went to Baltimore, primarily to hear performances by Sarah Vaughan. One evening happened to be especially memorable because the nightclub's sound system failed, and the audience sat in almost absolute silence for two hours, except for sustained applause each time she finished a song.

Carter is a bid sad that his one annual week of Habitat for Humanity volunteering and other more trivial topics of his life are more widely known that the worldwide efforts of his Carter Center. Even he himself when writing of a Carter Center trip doesn't recalling the detail of the work as "good times" here, but the adventure travel bolted onto the trip. The org's focus is on Human rights, Conflict resolution, Election monitoring, Public health, Eradication of infectious diseases, Mental health.

I've liked other works by Carter better. I really appreciate the way he speaks of his growing relationship with his wife, and how he treasures all the unique and happy experiences he had. It's clear he's not a man taking it for granted.

I never knew how interesting former President Carter is. He’s really a treasure. He writes in such a sincere manner, that one forgets about politics. This is a wonderful read.