Decades before today's public reckoning with the gap between America's ethos and its actions, Jimmy Carter looked out on a nation demoralized by Watergate, Vietnam, and racism, and prescribed a radical self-examination from which voters recoiled. The cost of his belief in doing the right thing would be losing his re-election—and witnessing the ascendance of Reagan. Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration, the co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winner American Prometheus reexamines the Carter presidency, delivering a clear-eyed assessment of a leader whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood.