“It is difficult,” wrote David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, “to overstate the psychological overload that the drama of the Trump presidency presents.”
Millions are feeling it and looking for escape. Jonathan Alter found his in the life and times of another president: Jimmy Carter.
He recalls: “Every time I felt the toxicity of Trump I could retreat to the Carter Library. The Carter papers kind of brushed away the toxins that I was feeling surrounding me.”
The upshot is His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, the first full-length independent biography of the 39th president, who shares little with the 45th except that both won the White House as political outsiders and both became desperately unpopular (Carter’s approval rating sank to 28%). Polls currently suggest both may last one term.
Speaking from his home in Montclair, New Jersey, Alter says: “I sent Carter an email saying, ‘Do you think you have anything in common with Donald Trump?’ and I got back a…
— to www.theguardian.com
