Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, by Randall Balmer

In his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002—when the George W. Bush administration was laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq—Jimmy Carter stated, “I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.” It was a moment of redemption for Carter’s progressive views.

Carter had always sought to live by this moral code in his private and public life. However, it was not until his model postpresidency, when he was no longer captive to political factionalism, that he could fully enact his religious vision as a “citizen of a troubled world.”

In his biography of the former president, Randall Balmer, a historian of religion at Dartmouth, uses Carter’s career to trace the treacherous history of progressive religious beliefs in the post-Watergate political environment.