The Washington Post called it "a lovely and haunting piece of work...conveys with quiet passion...its author's love for the place in which he grew up and where, he says, he expects to rest for eternity."

Written a few years back, and now offered by BuzzFlash at a special value price (including shipping and handling), Carter's charming and evocative books has lost none of its appeal.

By the way, isn't it great to have an ex-president who not only really reads books, but writes them -- and writes them so well?

From AudioFile:

Not since Abraham Lincoln have Americans become as familiar with another humble U.S. President raised in the heart of farm country as they are with Jimmy Carter. Carter revisits his Depression-era childhood growing up in Georgia before the Civil Rights Movement. Recounting treasured memories, Carter speaks candidly about black workers on the farm and the respect shown to them by his mother and father. In fact, some of Carter's fondest recollections surround his relationships with blacks and the marvelous lessons they unselfishly taught him about nature, farming, spirituality, and friendship. This is an inspirational story of a family pulling together during tough times while living with dignity and the resultant respect and goodness that propelled a young boy to become a kind and revered leader.

From Booklist:

Carter has written more than a dozen books since he left the White House; this vivid recollection of his Georgia childhood will probably be one of his most popular efforts. There are facts here--about the economics of farming during the Depression, the structure of sharecropping, and Georgia politics, for example--but the focus of Carter's narrative is the people who nurtured him on the farm and in Plains. Despite segregation, these people included African American neighbors as well as his own family, and Carter supplies lively portraits of many of the adults and children, black and white, who impressed him when he was little. Using a conversational tone, Carter wanders through the past, commenting on the weather and crop prices, local geography, chores and illnesses, adjusting to school, and learning to hunt and fish. Carter remains more popular as an ex-president than he was during his term of office, and his experiences are just different enough from those of most readers that his memoir should have broad appeal.