Jonathan Alter: A Presidential Reading List

President Carter spoke at my book group in 2015 when we were reading Thirteen Days in September by Lawrence Wright, a terrific account of the Camp David Accords. After reading the book and listening to Carter that evening, I figured that anyone who could pull off that virtuoso performance–one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of the 20th Century–must be more complicated and compelling than the easy shorthand: Bad president/good ex-president. When I learned that no historian had ever written a full-length biography of Carter, I moved toward the big hole in the line of scrimmage. Better still, my longtime editor, the late Alice Mayhew, was also Carter’s editor at Simon and Schuster. She was enthusiastic about the idea and smoothed the way with the Carters. So I had tremendous access, which helped.

Lincoln on the Verge by Ted Widmer. I’m a Chicagoan by birth and was fascinated by Lincoln before I could read. For several years, my mother used to bake me a cake on February 12, Lincoln’s birthday. I always knew that Lincoln’s trip east from Springfield in 1861 to take the oath was an adventure story. When Ted, a friend, told me that there was much more to the story than the threat on Lincoln’s life in Baltimore, I got excited about the book. It is superbly written and a great contribution to the Lincoln literature.

My favorite books were called Landmark Books, a series for young readers published in the 1950s and 1960s about American history. They were the brainchild of Bennett Cerf, publisher of Random House, and were all written by Pulitzer Prize winners and famous journalists, not academics, though I knew none of that at the time. Among my favorites were The Swamp Fox of the Revolution (about Francis Marion), The Wright Brothers, and a book about Appomattox.

Two things: Just how bad things were in the Jim Crow South, where white terrorism ruled and Carter himself was intimidated by the threat of violence. And how much Carter accomplished legislatively when he was president–15 major environmental bills, and that’s only for starters. Donald Trump would never have been impeached (the first time) were it not for Carter-era laws that protected whistleblowers and established inspectors general. The list goes on and on.

Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man by Bill Russell and Taylor Branch. It’s a very old book that I bought for my son, Tommy Alter, who co-hosts (with JJ Redick) a podcast on basketball. Tommy knew that Taylor Branch was the brilliant biographer of MLK but he didn’t know he ghost-wrote one of best sports memoirs ever.

A chair in our bedroom.

Chaotic. It mostly consists of Gmail notes to myself on my iPhone.

An Early History of Montclair, NJ, where I live.

My Life in the Middle Ages by James Atlas.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham, Lincoln by David Donald, The Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy by Edmund Morris, Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World by Evan Thomas and Being Nixon by Evan Thomas, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents by Richard Neustadt, The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro, The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House by John Harris, The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg.

My inscribed copy of Obama’s memoirs.

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. I read it in high school and it gave me something to shoot for.

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad. It’s about a young cancer survivor. I’m one, too. I have an advance copy and the advance word is very positive.