Born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, Carter is the son of a conservative peanut farmer and Georgia state legislator and a liberal-minded nurse. He studied at Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in 1943. He graduated in 1946 and served in the Navy for seven years, mostly on submarines. After the death of his father in 1953, Carter resigned his commission and returned home to Georgia to take over management of the family business. He quickly proved successful as both a businessman and civic leader.

In 1962, Carter won election to Georgia's state Senate as a Democrat. He was re-elected in 1964. In 1966 he ran for his party's gubernatorial nomination, losing to a segregationist opponent in a respectable showing at the polls. The defeat discouraged him, but he regained his confidence after a religious awakening. Four years later Carter ran again and won. In office, he ignored many of his conservative campaign pronouncements and pursued a progressive program. In 1974 he announced his candidacy for the White House and during the next two years brilliantly portrayed himself as an "outsider" and a politician who would "never lie" to the people. In the 1976 election he defeated incumbent Gerald Ford.

Carter's presidency, although successful at times, on the whole was a disappointment. Often criticized as an ineffective communicator, the president's relations with Congress were strained. In foreign policy, Carter's public criticism of other governments' human rights records did not always help U.S. diplomacy. In 1978 Carter brokered the Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, his greatest triumph. Relations with the Soviet Union were difficult. In 1979 Carter nonetheless managed to conclude a new U.S.-Soviet arms control agreement, SALT II. In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year, Carter ordered the treaty shelved. By late 1979, his administration was also under the cloud of the Iranian revolution and the hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy. On top of that, the nation's economy was moving toward a recession. Carter never managed to conquer these problems, and he lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan. Since leaving office, Carter has been very active, as well as popular, as an international mediator and promoter of democracy and human rights.