In this acclaimed bestseller, President Carter returns to his early years in Plains, Georgia, the same locale that enchanted readers of An Hour Before Daylight, which The New Yorker called "an American classic." He remembers the Christmas days of his boyhood and later years, re-creating here the simplicity of community and celebration with family and friends.

Jimmy Carter has written another American classic in the tradition of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales....

Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter was a registered nurse, physicians' assistant, pecan grower, university housemother, nursing home manager, Peace Corps Volunteer, and renowned public speaker and raconteur. She ignored the restrictive mores and prejudices of the racially segregated South of the Great Depression years, and was an avid lifelong supporter of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers because she happened to attend the first major league baseball game in which Jackie Robinson, from Cairo, Georgia, ever played.

"Miz Lillie" was a favored guest on television talk shows, including those of Johnny Carson and Walter Cronkite, usually able to "steal the microphone" from her hosts.

Carter writes: "My mother was often gone from home when I was a boy, serving as a nurse on private duty in her patients' homes. She was supposed to receive six dollars for her twenty hours of service, but knew in advance that most of her families would never be able to pay. Since she came home around midnight to bathe and change into a fresh uniform, we children would sometimes miss seeing her for more than a week at a time. She would not forget, however, to leave written instructions on the front room table that prescribed our multiple chores."

President Carter loved his parents deeply and he particularly ascribes to his mother, the inspiration for his life's work....

In this urgent, balanced, and passionate book, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter argues that the present moment is a unique time for achieving peace in the Middle East -- and he offers a bold and comprehensive plan to do just that.

President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them.

Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration.

This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and doable path to peace....

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."...

In this urgent, balanced, and passionate book, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter argues that the present moment is a unique time for achieving peace in the Middle East -- and he offers a bold and comprehensive plan to do just that.

President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them.

Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration.

This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and doable path to peace....

PRESIDENT CARTER'S COURAGEOUS ASSESSMENT OF WHAT MUST BE DONE TO BRING PERMANENT PEACE TO ISRAEL WITH DIGNITY AND JUSTICE TO PALESTINE...

The Nobel Lecture

was delivered by Jimmy Carter

on December 10, 2002,

at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway,

where he received the

Nobel Prize for Peace....

All three volumes of Jimmy Carter's acclaimed, Grammy-nominated series Sunday Mornings in Plains at a new low price!

For almost three decades, President Carter has taught the adult Bible study at his church in Plains, Georgia where several hundred visitors join him each Sunday to understand the wisdom of the Bible and apply it to their lives. The Sunday Mornings in Plains Collection presents recordings from these classes and includes:

Leading a Worthy Life
Describing basic tenets of Christian living that still resonate today, President Carter speaks to the theme of reconciliation -- with God and with each other and shares insights into the practical application f faith in daily life that will challenge and inspire all of us.

Measuring Our Success
These classes open with President Carter's comments on the eve and outset of the Iraq war, imbuing them with significant and lasting historical interest, and offering a dramatic and moving demonstration of the struggle to reconcile spiritual ideals with the challenges and conflicts of contemporary life.

Bringing Peace to a Changing World
Including President Carter's reflections on his personal experience waging peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, with practical, inspiring examples of how each of us can put these Christian ideals prophesized by Isaiah into practice in our lives and communities....