STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Former President Jimmy Carter has lived long enough to receive another award. To his Nobel Peace Prize, he can now add an honor for writing. Judges of the annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize gave him a lifetime achievement award. The Dayton prize is named after the Ohio city that hosted a peace conference, and it honors books promoting peace. Carter learned of this a few weeks short of his 100th birthday. So I asked his grandson Jason Carter how the former president took the news.
JASON CARTER: He's proud of many accomplishments, but he really considers himself an author probably fundamentally these days, and so he was really, really excited to be recognized. You know, he's been in hospice for 19 months, which some of us didn't even know was possible. But he's still experiencing the world, and he's still gratified by things like this.
INSKEEP: When you say he considers himself a writer first, he has written 32 books so far, I guess we should say.
JASON CARTER: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: That's an extraordinary amount.
JASON CARTER: Yeah. And, you know, he has written them from the heart. He's written them about topics that are important to him. My favorites are ones about his early life because it's such a window into this remarkable transformation of the world over the last hundred years. But I think fundamentally, he's written about peace in a variety of contexts, and that's why this award is a special one for him.
INSKEEP: We could sit down and have a conversation about one of those books, I think, which is my favorite of his, called "Turning Point," which is about the first time that he ran for office in the then-segregated South in the early 1960s.
JASON CARTER: It's an incredible book. That's actually one of my favorites of his as well. And it's about topics that are coming up these days. It's about folks trying to steal an election and his efforts to prevent that from occurring. And it's a really remarkable moment in time that launched his political career and, I think, launched a lot of the Carter Center's work in ensuring fair and honest elections.
INSKEEP: I'm just remembering details of that book. Georgia had been redistricted in a certain way that kept certain people in power and certain people out of power - Black and white, in this case. And there were allegations that the election for state Senate had been stolen. There are a lot of current issues in there.
JASON CARTER: Yeah. It's remarkable. And, you know, there's courtroom drama. There's people bringing in votes in a burlap sack. It really is quite a story.
INSKEEP: I want to note he also wrote about foreign policy.
JASON CARTER: Sure. I mean, you know, I think - my son is 18 and, when he was an infant, had the book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" dedicated to him. And as he has grown up, you know, we've watched those issues that were raised in that book really come to the forefront again for new generations to look back on those issues. And my grandfather's perspective is one I think we're missing right now.
INSKEEP: We interviewed former President Carter about that book on this program many years ago. He was fiercely criticized for putting the word apartheid right in the title of the book, for starters.
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JIMMY CARTER: This is a word that's a very accurate description of the forced separation within the West Bank of Israelis from Palestinians and the total domination and oppression.
JASON CARTER: He was surprised at the extent to which that book got judged by its cover in many ways. When you put the word apartheid in the title, it's going to be inflammatory and certainly was at the time. But I do think that the principle's there. He wrote a second book, or really a fourth book, about the Middle East called "We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land," that espoused the same sort of fundamental principles that was received a little bit differently.
But it's a remarkable testament, I think, to his role in that region that the Camp David Accords, which, you know, we've celebrated the 46th anniversary of just this week, are still one of the fundamental building blocks for Israeli security and also for Palestinian rights. And I think he was able to be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. And that's something that I think we're looking for today.
INSKEEP: Some famous people have someone help them write a book or have someone write the book. He emphasized to us, I write this book. I'm responsible for the words. Did you ever see him writing? What was he like when he was in that mode?
JASON CARTER: He spent an enormous amount of time writing. As you know, in the second stage or act of his life, as he was traveling the world with the Carter Center, he spent a lot of time on airplanes. He wrote a lot on the airplane. And then he would always go up to his mountain cabin up in north Georgia, where he built most of the furniture, and he would sit and look out at this river and finish his books. He was disciplined as he was in everything else. He took it very, very seriously and was very proud of the work product, as it were.
INSKEEP: Little personal here, but I'm thinking you were very small when he left the White House and was starting to write books. Did you ever, like, walk in on him, and he said, get away from me, kid - I'm writing, I'm thinking?
JASON CARTER: No, I never - he never shushed me out of anything, as far as I can remember, mostly because he would get up at 5 in the morning to do his writing. And even when I was little, I don't think I was walking in then.
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JASON CARTER: He certainly lived his life on that naval time frame. And so he was up every morning, you know, and we would all wake up, and he would say, you know, I've read all the newspapers that I wanted to read today, and I've written for an hour and a half; what have you guys done? - knowing that we've just gotten out of bed.
INSKEEP: Jason Carter, it's a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.
JASON CARTER: Likewise. Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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