Jimmy Carter was the strangest American president of the last half-century, and that is saying a lot. He was a small-town farmer of the American South and a worldly Navy engineer; he was a proponent of civil rights who never felt comfortable with Northern liberals; he was a devout Southern Baptist who alienated evangelicals; and, most startling, he was a seasoned politician (elected to the Georgia Senate and the governorship before the presidency) but hated politics — he believed it was "sinful," his closest advisers observed.
Although these contradictions make Carter a potentially fascinating figure, he is a surprisingly boring subject for biography. In Kai Bird's detailed book The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president is sometimes laudable, sometimes frustrating and always intelligent, but he is, above all, a straight man. He wakes at 5:30 each morning, he studies every issue in detail, he agonizes over decisions, and he earnestly implores others to follow. When he faces inevitable resistance, even from his friends, he repeats the cycle: Rise early, work hard, and implore people to listen.