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 Must read August 10, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a truly remarkable memoir describing the depression-era South. A must read, even if you are not a fan of Jimmy Carter.
Easy to read November 8, 2007
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a very enjoyable book. I love to read about the true
South. Jimmy Carter is a man to be admired. He grew up learning
to work for what he wanted. He shows great respect for others.
A very good read.
 A book filled with memories of a boyhood during the Depression October 29, 2007
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
AN HOUR BEFORE DAYLIGHT by Jimmy Carter
October 29, 2007
Rating: 4/5 Stars
I've now read several books written by President Jimmy Carter and I've enjoyed them all. What I love about his books is his personal touch he lends to them. AN HOUR BEFORE DAYLIGHT however is the first full memoir that I've read by Jimmy Carter (the other books were books on Faith), and seeing the world of his childhood, depression era Georgia, has been insightful. This childhood he had is what shaped him into the giving person he is today.
Living in the South during this time meant that blacks were separate from whites, and whites were superior to blacks. And while some of these attitudes may have prevailed even in the Carter household, he was also taught to treat blacks with respect, and most of his childhood friends were the black children of the hired hands they had on their farm. The Carters, compared to many of their neighbors at the time, did well in farming and were very resourceful in all they endeavored. Hard work was the ethic they lived by, but Jimmy Carter also had stories to tell about childhood antics and enjoying life on the farm. Carter also talks about his siblings, mostly referring to his sisters Ruth and Gloria (Billy came along much later, but he is mentioned in the book, in particular in regards to his tragic early death). He looked up to his father, and greatly admired his mother, a woman who did so much in her later years and became famous in her own right (some of the stories Jimmy relates are quite humorous, including her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers, later the LA dodgers and her friendship with the team).
AN HOUR BEFORE DAYLIGHT is not the perfect book. I found a lot of it to be rather dry reading, but I still enjoyed the anecdotes and stories that Jimmy Carter wrote about his growing up years. He's seen a lot in his life and has used what he learned to enrich others and help those who need it. I am slowly going through Carter's library of books and look forward to the next one.
 Interesting, quick read but tedious in spots October 24, 2007
24 out of 25 found this review helpful
I've been wanting to read one or more of President Carter's books for a long time and decided to begin with this one. While I agree that it is well-executed in the main, it doesn't score higher with me on a few grounds.
One: I felt there was a need for more fastidious editing. The book was by no means too long, but there was repetition and disordered content.
Two: Way too much detail in some of the more mundane and unpleasant sections, in particular discussions of minutiae of small-town agribusiness dealings as well as graphic detail of livestock issues including slaughtering and castrating. TMI.
Three: This is a half-hearted complaint, for I realize this isn't the book where these matters would likely be discussed considering the author has several other memoirs addressing other periods of his life (doesn't he?) In any case, I felt like the President did not discuss enough how his upbringing resulted in his being the man he is today as far as race relations are concerned. Lots of discussion about the relatively tolerant household in which he was raised, but lots of apology at the same time about how racism was ubiquitous at the time and not really perceived by his family or by others as a wrong to be righted. I don't know, I guess I'm rambling here, but I would have liked to have read content along the lines of "and these boyhood experiences shaped my perceptions in such a way that I wanted to make a difference in my public service career" and also I woulda liked to have read about how he connects his religious beliefs with his liberal leanings. Flesh out that relationship a bit more.
Just my 2 cents.
In any event, the book was a quick read and I am very glad I got around to reading it.
wonderful memoir of a country boy who became President June 29, 2007
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
After reading this book it is easy to understand why Jimmy Carter was denigrated as a weak Leader who let America's enemies walk all over him. As he looks back with affection & describes his childhood in a strict, hardworking, but loving family on a farm in back country Depression-Era Georgia, Mr Carter comes across as a genuinely kind and good man who respects his fellow-men & women - regardless of color or creed; who is tolerant of - though not entirely blind to -- the shortcomings & foibles of others, and truly incapable of seeing evil in anyone. In short, he is the Ideal Christian. This also goes a long way to explain why subsequently he became so widely respected on the International stage in his second career as Humanitarian & Fixer of the World's Problems.
Mr Carter paints a colourful word-picture of his boyhood home, the close-knit community, the Carter farm, the livestock, the hunting dogs, his family, and his neighbours, the black tenant farmers and their children with whom he worked and played. There is nostalgia for a time and way of life that largely disappeared from this continent half a century ago, when children worked harder & shouldered more responsibility than today's young people can even imagine, but which was the making of them as responsible adults. Yet his writing style is innocent & light-hearted, and occasionally down-right laughable as, for example, when he gives us some examples of his rural childhood diction. It is hard to imagine the urbane, educated Mr Carter uttering the words "We et a bait of plums" or, having travelled 30 miles to see the flooding Flint River, "Wheh de ribber, Daddy? Is it down in dat creek?"
This book touched me on a more personal level as well. I was not far into it before I realised it reminded me so much of the spell-binding stories my mother used to tell us children around the dinner table, stories of her life growing up on a 240 acre Clay Belt farm as one of 15 children of Ukrainian immigrants. The climate, the geography and the neighbours' ethnicity may have been worlds away from the Carters, but her life and her experiences could just as well have happened down the dusty road from Plains, Georgia.
Attention Jimmy Carter: If you read this - I asked my mother about the sound made by the metal clicker on the handle of the milk separator. She is an expert: one of her chores was to operate the milk separator; and afterward to disassemble, clean & reassemble all its the component parts, which she could perform as rapidly as a soldier does with his rifle.
Mother says you have to turn the handle faster & faster until it reaches the speed necessary for the cream to separate from the milk inside the machine. The change in the tone of the "clicker" is determined by the speed of the turning handle & occurs when the required speed has been reached for the separation to occur.
Mr Carter is one of only a handful of public figures with whom I would care to be acquainted. Such an interesting Life; such an interesting man!
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