An Hour Before Daylight
Born on October 1, 1924,Jimmy Cartergrew  up on a Georgia farm during the Great Depression. InAn Hour Before  Daylight, the former president tells the story of his rural boyhood, and  paints a sensitive portrait of America before the civil rights movement.Carter describes--in glorious, if sometimes gory, detail--growing up on a farm  where everything was done by either hand or mule: plowing fields, "mopping"  cotton to kill pests, cutting sugar cane, shaking peanuts, or processing pork.  He also describes the joys of walking barefoot ("this habit alone helped to  create a sense of intimacy with the earth"), taking naps with his father on the  porch after lunch, and hunting with slingshots and boomerangs with his  playmates--all of whom were black. Carter was in constant contact with his black  neighbors; he worked alongside them, ate in their homes, and often spent the  night in the home of Rachel and Jack Clark, "on a pallet on the floor stuffed  with corn shucks," when his parents were away. However, this intimacy was  possible only on the farm. When young Jimmy and his best friend, A.D. Davis,  went to town to see a movie, they waited for the train together, paid their 15  cents, and then separated into "white" and "colored" compartments. Once in  Americus, they walked to the theater together, but separated again, with Jimmy  buying a seat on the main floor or first balcony at the front door, and A.D.  going around to the back door to buy his seat up in the upper balcony. After the  movie, they returned home on another segregated train. "I don't remember ever  questioning the mandatory racial separation, which we accepted like breathing or  waking up in Archery every morning."In this warm, almost sepia-toned narrative, Carter describes his relationships  with his parents and with the five people--only two of whom were white--who most  affected his early life. Best of all, however, Carter presents his sweetly  nostalgic recollections of a lost America.--Sunny Delaney