PositiveThe NationThere is a lot to disagree with, in whole or in part, in The Outlier’s depiction of Carter, but one of the reasons it is worth reading is that Bird...fair-mindedly sets down many of the counterarguments to his own case that Carter was a good president. That is why, reading The Outlier, this reader came away with a wealth of new reasons to confirm why he was, at least as president, often so bad ... On the subject of what was perhaps Carter’s greatest achievement, however, Bird is outstanding. His freshly researched and detailed account of Carter’s brokering of the landmark peace deal between Israel and Egypt is nearly worth the price of the book alone ... one of The Outlier’s considerable strengths is that, as a result of Bird’s comprehensiveness and fair-mindedness, we are presented with so many counterexamples that disprove the idea that Carter was an outlier. Reading the book, we get to see arrayed in one place how many close advisers Carter kept around him mainly because of how comfortable they made him feel—many because, in Fallows’s shrewd assessment, they owed \'their first loyalty to the welfare and advance of Jimmy Carter.\'
