American History Too!

We’re back with the second part of our discussion of President Jimmy Carter and his times.  On this episode we cast our eye beyond the United States and discuss the tumultuous foreign events that took place during the late 1970s in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  Why is Jimmy Carter, a president who brokered a historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, remembered as a weak leader who presided over American decline on the world stage? 

We wrap up with a discussion of Carter’s post-presidency and ask, is he the greatest of all the post-presidents? 

Also, we should note that we recorded this podcast before the sad news that Jimmy Carter has been diagnosed with cancer.

Thanks again for listening,

Mark and Malcolm

@ahtoopodcast

Reading for both podcasts 15a and 15b:

Jimmy Carter, White House diary (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

Andrew Scott Cooper, The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia changed the balance of power in the Middle East (Oxford:  Oneworld Publications, 2011)

Kenneth Earl Morris, Jimmy Carter:  American moralist (Athens, GA:  University of Georgia Press, 1996)

Scott Kaufman, Plans Unraveled: The Foreign Policy of the Carter Administration (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008)

Dominic Sandbrook, Mad as Hell: the crisis of the 1970s and the rise of the populist Right (New York: A.A. Knopf, 2011)

‘Jimmy Carter’, PBS American Experience (2002)