Product Description

This is the story of President Jimmy Carter's post-presidency, the most admired and productive in the nation's history. Through The Carter Center, which he and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982, he has fought neglected diseases, waged peace in war zones, and built hope among some of the most forgotten and needy people in the world.

Serving in more than seventy nations, Carter has led peacekeeping efforts for Ethiopia, North Korea, Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Uganda, and Sudan. With his colleagues from The Carter Center, he has monitored more than sixty-five elections in troubled nations, from Palestine to Indonesia.

Carter's bold initiatives, undertaken with dedicated colleagues, have eliminated, prevented, or cured an array of diseases that have been characterized as "neglected" by the World Health Organization and that afflict tens of millions of people unnecessarily. The Carter Center has taught millions of African families how to increase the production of food grains, and Rosalynn Carter has led a vigorous war against the stigma of mental illness around the world.

"Immersing ourselves among these deprived and suffering people has been a great blessing as it stretched our minds and hearts," Jimmy Carter writes. "The principles of The Carter Center have been the same ones that should characterize our nation, or any individual. They are the beliefs inherent in all the great world religions, including commitments to peace, justice, freedom, humility, forgiveness or an attempt to find accommodation with potential foes, generosity, human rights or fair treatment of others, protection of the environment, and the alleviation of suffering. This is our agenda for the future."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61089 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-02
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Less a memoir than an extended brochure for his nonprofit institution, the Carter Center, President Carter's latest book ruminates on his work since leaving the Oval Office. With major programs in election monitoring, conflict negotiation and disease prevention and eradication, the center has been active in nearly 100 nations since its 1984 inception. Carter structures this book as a series of vignettes detailing his involvement with a specific nation or issue, from Haiti to schistosomiasis. While he does not hesitate to criticize American policy, those hoping for extensive political analysis will be disappointed. Some of the chapters provide useful insight into international development practices and high-level diplomatic negotiation, and Carter presents a compelling rebuttal to criticisms of his hobnobbing with dictators and totalitarians. Sharing the 39th president's boundless energy and enthusiasm for humanitarian work, the book is written in a highly personal and informal style: Carter exults in having convinced his Chinese minders to allow him and Rosalynn to bike freely around 1981 Beijing, and fumes with indignation upon being subjected to tobacco advertising on a flight home from the Balkans. Ultimately, though, this book doesn't measure up to his bestsellers of recent years. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Jimmy Carter is a man without artifice, and his charming book reflects that same directness. His presentation is a simple, straightforward reading of his text. Listeners familiar with his presidential speeches will recognize the distinctive Georgia drawl and rather wooden delivery. However, as the book progresses and Carter discusses his and Rosalynns work on health issues in some of the most desperately poor places on earth, he becomes much more animated. And it is with obvious warmth and pride that he introduces Rosalynn, who narrates the sections dealing with her personal initiatives. The bonus disc, recordings of four of Jimmy Carters Sunday school classes, offers the most personal and engaging glimpse into the former presidents personality. M.O.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Trachoma

Trachoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world, but it is still known as one of the "neglected" diseases. It is caused by infection and can be treated, but 7 million people have been stricken blind by trachoma. An additional 500 million, usually the poorest and most forgotten in communities that are already struggling for survival, are at risk. In African countries, these are often areas where lymphatic filariasis, Guinea worm, schistosomiasis, and onchocerciasis are also endemic.

I knew about cases of trachoma as a boy, and I often had conjunctivitis, or sore eyes. As is the case now in our targeted areas of Africa, flies were everywhere, breeding in the excrement from both animals and humans. Our barn lot was nearby, and chickens, ducks, and geese ran freely in the yard. Screened doors and windows helped, but we also had to put a piece of gauze on top of any open pot or pitcher to keep the fl ies out of our milk or food. Fortunately, my mother was a nurse and a stickler for cleanliness, and our family had the only outdoor privy in the community. Trachoma was considered a threat to America in those early years, so doctors at Ellis Island used buttonhooks to examine the undersides of immigrants' eyelids and shipped those with trachoma back to their home countries.

Trachoma is caused by fi lthy and infected eyes, beginning as conjunctivitis and ultimately causing the upper eyelids to turn inward. Every blink drags the eyelashes across the corneas, causing pain like a thorn in the eye and then permanent blindness. The disease can be transmitted by contact with an infected person, by hands, a towel, or a garment, or carried by flies that have come in contact with discharge from infected eyes. Transmission is enhanced by an intimate relationship between mother and child or within a family or close-knit community.

Rosalynn and I had noticed during our visits to Masai and Dinka villages that, when seen from a distance, children appeared to be wearing eyeglasses, but when we approached them it was clear that rings of flies were sucking moisture from their eyes. The children rarely brushed the flies away and had never been taught to wash their faces.

In 1997, at the request of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, The Carter Center decided to make a major effort to help control trachoma in Ghana, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, countries where the average annual income ranges from $100 to $370. We knew that trachoma only deepened the despair and poverty in these communities.

We began learning about the disease and raising funds to support the new program. Having been a district governor of Lions Clubs International during the mid-1960s, I knew that protecting eyesight was the organization's major benevolent project. I went to their Chicago headquarters to relay our plans, and they pledged a total of $16 million for five years, permitting an expansion of our program to Ethiopia and Sudan. The Hilton Foundation promised $13.6 million for a total of ten years.

The first cases of trachoma that we saw were in Mali, where Rosalynn, our Carter Center team, and I were joined by Jim Ervin, president of Lions Clubs International, and leaders of Lions Clubs in the country. Through an interpreter, we talked to a blind grandmother who said she was thirty years old. She was holding in her arms a little boy, about the same age as Amy's son, our youngest grandchild. Someone said, "The fl ies cluster shoulder to shoulder around an infected eye." With proper treatment, the grandson would never be blind.

Along with other organizations involved in the International Trachoma Initiative, we use the acronym SAFE as a guide to treatment: S = surgery, A = antibiotic, F = face cleaning, and E = environment.

Before surgery, victims carry crude tweezers, with which they pluck out all their eyelashes, but the hairs grow back even sharper. We are able to train nurses or physician's assistants to perform the simple surgery, a fi fteen- minute procedure, to restore the eyelids to their normal position. On surgery day, hundreds of people desperate for relief stream into eyelid surgery camps run by the government and paid for by The Carter Center. We prefer a month of training, which costs six hundred dollars per worker, plus eight hundred dollars for two surgical instrument kits each. The materials for each operation cost about ten dollars.

In September 2000, Jim Ervin went with me to the headquarters of Pfizer Inc, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, where we met with corporate leaders and I spoke to several hundred of their assembled employees about trachoma. I described the SAFE program and emphasized that their antibiotic Zithromax® had proven to be most effective against the infection. I described how Merck had been contributing free Mectizan® for the treatment of onchocerciasis, and their CEO, William Steere, offered to provide Zithromax® whenever we could set up an effective system in a country for its use. Subsequently, Pfizer has expanded this commitment so that it now includes more than 135 million treatments. This is an invaluable contribution in fifteen of the fifty-five countries where trachoma is endemic.

Children can be taught by parents, teachers, or health workers to keep their faces clean, and the plethora of flies can be reduced by maintaining a sanitary environment using methods that are taken for granted in the developed world.

We combat trachoma in six countries, but our most intense effort is in the Amhara region of central Ethiopia, the most severely affected place in the nation. Our survey revealed that up to 80 percent of children there had early stages of the disease. Approximately 1.25 percent of all Ethiopians are blind, the highest incidence in the world, and more than 80 percent have some form of trachoma. Because mothers look after the children and children are the most heavily infected, women are three times more likely to develop the late stage of the disease. Usually the main workers in the house, women incapacitated with trachoma become a special burden. While their children may care for older blind women, younger women are frequently divorced by their husbands and sent back to their parents. In some communities in Ethiopia and Sudan, as many as 20 percent of women over fifteen years old are going blind and risk these social and economic punishments for their illness.

Dr. Paul Emerson joined The Carter Center as director for the Trachoma Control Program in November 2004. He had devoted nearly a decade to operational research and program evaluation in support of the global effort to control the disease, and under his leadership we quickly extended programs begun by Dr. Jim Zingeser to encourage face washing. Our latest reports from teachers and others show that more than 60 percent of the children are proudly demonstrating clean faces each morning.

The next stage of our program proved the most interesting and earned me a new reputation in Ethiopia. We learned that it was taboo for women to relieve themselves where they could be seen. They had to either defecate and urinate within their living compounds or restrain themselves until dark. One woman told Dr. Emerson, "I am a prisoner of daylight!" We decided to distribute simple plans for the construction of latrines: just dig a hole in the ground; fix the top with boards, stones, or concrete so it wouldn't cave in; and enclose it for privacy with brush, clay, or cloth. A latrine could be constructed for a cost of less than a dollar.

As latrines were being built and cleanliness became more important, many communities did not have access to enough soap, and they revived the lost craft of soap making. This provided not only an affordable method of sanitation but also a new product that women could sell to generate income.

We set an ambitious goal in Amhara district of ten thousand latrines during the first year, but we underestimated the power of women who saw them as a form of liberation. Family by family and village by village, latrine building was adopted as a major project, and 306,000 latrines were built within three years! We encouraged families to hang a gourd filled with water at each entrance, with a tiny hole at the bottom plugged with a stick. When we visited the area in 2005, people were especially proud to show us how they could now wash their faces and hands after using the privy. I became known as the Father of Latrines.

Malaria

There is an apparent anomaly in the current statistics from the World Health Organization on annual deaths from diseases in the developing world, which seem to underestimate the ravages of malaria. In order of deadliness, (1) respiratory diseases come fi rst at 4 million deaths per year, followed by (2) HIV/AIDS, 3 million, (3) malaria, 1 to 5 million, (4) diarrhea, 2.2 million, and (5) tuberculosis, 2 million. But the organization also states, "Malaria kills more than three thousand children each day in sub- Saharan Africa," which amounts to 1.1 million annually just for this age group and geographic area. In Ethiopia, we know that annual deaths from HIV/AIDS are 130,000, while 270,000 die from malaria. This devastating disease causes a lifetime of suffering from chills, diarrhea, pain, and high fevers, with its fatalities concentrated among pregnant women and children in their first five years of life.

Malaria was prevalent in southwestern Georgia when I was growing up during the Great Depression, and it was not until 1946 that the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) was established, primarily to eliminate this disease. A year later, a vast effort was begun to screen houses and to spray outdoor wet places with DDT, and by 1950 only two thousand cases were reported. Malaria was considered eradicated from the United States by 1951. (The CDC subsequently became known as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Meanwhile, the insecticide DDT has been banned from outdoor use in most nations since its devastating effect on wildlife became known.

Along with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, malaria qualifies as one of the "big three" diseases for whi...

Customer Reviews

Told in Carter's plain-spoken, folksy manner
Pulitzer Prize winner and former President Jimmy Carter presents his memoir/retrospective on twenty-five years of humanitarian work in Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope, now available in an unabridged audiobook on CD with tracks every three minutes for easy bookmarking. Narrated by Tom Stechschulte and Barbara Caruso, Beyond the White House tells of Carter's travels to distant, often war-torn lands from Haiti to Ethiopia on missions of peacekeeping, as well as his efforts to combat disease. Though told in Carter's plain-spoken, folksy manner, Beyond the White House not only illuminates his world-spanning efforts to do good, but also challenges the listener to think and act in ways that promote responsible worldwide social ethics. Highly recommended. 7 CDs, 7 3/4 hours.

A Former President and His Many Good Works
Beyond the White House is a book written by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and it covers his political, social, and humanitarian activities since he left the White House early in 1981. Carter has achieved much in his days since leaving Washington D.C. and he seems anxious to share his accomplishments with the reader. Through his Carter Center, the former president, his wife Rosalynn, and their team of associates at the center have labored long hours, traveled around the world, and met with dozens of foreign leaders to work out agreements, wipe out disease, and improve political freedom.

Most people already know about Jimmy Carter's humanitarian works and his efforts to improve the world around him. But some may not be aware of the actual events that have transpired while working toward these goals. Carter explains some of them in detail, and in some instances, he takes the details a bit too far. This is especially true in the book's opening chapters when Carter is discussing his meetings with government leaders of different countries. When I started to read this part of the book, I was expecting something written in a manner similar to a personal memoir. Instead, these opening chapters read like a play- by- play excerpt from a diary. I was expecting a quick overview of the meetings and what was achieved, but Carter felt the need to give the rundown on what happened each day and at different times throughout the day. A quick summary would have been sufficient.

In the second half of the book, however, Carter settles down and starts to talk about some of his important humanitarian achievements. I particularly liked the chapter on fighting disease. I was fully aware of Carter's work with Habitat for Humanity and I knew that he and his wife Rosalynn Carter were active in working toward a disease- free world. But I did not know exactly what diseases were high on their list and what level of success they had achieved. This chapter explains it all, and it includes some graphic photographs of individuals inflicted with certain preventable diseases. Carter explains in this chapter how he and his associates at the Carter Center have worked with the native people of different African nations and have helped them eliminate many diseases simply by encouraging cleanliness and by advocating filtering water before drinking.

The chapter titled "Building Hope" is another good chapter because it includes some of Carter's work on human rights. I would have preferred that this chapter be a little longer, but it still gets the point across. Carter is very concerned about political freedom and he has worked long and hard to spread democracy and basic human rights around the world. I also liked that he included a section on his work in his home state of Georgia; specifically, in the city of Atlanta, to improve living conditions among the city's poor.

Beyond the White House isn't a political book in the usual sense. Carter voices a few concerns about the human rights violations that have taken place under George W. Bush's watch and he points out the positive working relationship he has enjoyed with Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and others. But other than that, he steers clear of political criticisms and differences in this book. He wanted this to be a book about the accomplishments of the Carter Center and he wanted to inspire everyone to work toward change for the betterment of humans around the world. For the most part, this book generally succeeds in these endeavors.

Overall, Beyond the White House is a good book about Jimmy Carter's work as an ex- president and it details the many accomplishments of the Carter Center in its efforts to spread democracy, eliminate disease, and encouraging improvements in human rights. The first part of the book is a little more detailed than it needed to be, and some of the other chapters could use a little more length. But the book is still good overall and it presents a nice summary of what a person can achieve to improve the world around them. Carter had his share of difficulties as president, but his days since leaving the White House have been filled with achievement, and his life is a good example of the good that people can do in the later stages of their lives.

what an example for all of us...
What this man has done post presidency is simply amazing. Pres. Carter writes in a simple unassumming style while telling these incredible stories of things he has been involved in since he left office, like eradicating terrible diseases and monitoring elections. A really interesting read..