Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter

Balmer’s personal memories and savory writing send us back to the 1970’s when Vietnam losses and Watergate lies still bled from fresh social wounds. The country yearned for honesty and integrity. We saw it in a Georgia peanut farmer, and we made him President. And then, just as quickly, we jaded.

Blamer describes the era as well as the man, Jimmy Carter, himself. Regardless of how you voted, or if you were even alive that long ago, this story is much more than a biography about a man who faced the Iranian hostage crisis or the cliff of financial disaster from two decades of fiscal irresponsibility. There are some secrets disclosed, not due to national security, but because we hid the facts from ourselves.

In the course of seeing Carter in a new light, we see the ugliness of politics for all it does to us, to our eroding integrity as a people. We glimpse behind the scenes of campaigning only to ask ourselves: Does a Godly man stand a chance in such a corrupt business? By the end of Carter’s term, we wanted something more complicated. Balmer holds up the mirror for us.