“... a prodigious appetite for it? Kissinger lost his job as secretary of state in January 1977, on Jimmy Carter’s arrival in the White House. Before that he had been one of the most famous men in the world, repeatedly on the cover of Time and Newsweek, and in one red-letter week in 1972 fronting both magazines at the same time. In June 1974, two months ...”

“... of factual information diligently acquired. It is helpful to know, for example, that President Carter’s speech, shortly before Sadat’s famous visit to Jerusalem in 1977, in which he dared to express himself in favour of the ‘legitimate rights of the Palestinian people’, elicited, 827 phone-calls to the White House and 7,268 protest ...”

“... no place for him. His only government job between Vietnam and the end of the Cold War came during Jimmy Carter’s Democratic presidency, and he spent the rest of the period as a hanger-on with a punishing schedule on the DC society circuit. As assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs under Carter, who came to ...”

“... makes of car and brands of clothes: someone wears ‘a Homestead Grays hoodie, a pair of Jimmy Jazz ripped and distressed jeans with too many pointless zippers, low-top red Superstar Pumas’. New Yorkers customise themselves so relentlessly that he has to come up with a special term for the occasional eccentric who wears a ‘wordless’ blue ...”

“... make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of ...”

“... a second term, and Nixon eluding impeachment by a hair. The two decent men who followed, Ford and Carter, seemed trapped in a torpor of virtue, trying hard to restore integrity to the Presidency by offering the nation homilies in place of the decisive policies it was demanding. It is around these themes of the 20th-century Presidency in crisis that Garry ...”

“... roots, he returned to form. In the New Republic in the 1970s, he was quick to call out Jimmy Carter’s financialisation agenda as a neoliberal betrayal of the vital centre, Reaganite in all but name. Similarly, he looked with foreboding on one of the neoliberal flagships, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which was launched in the ...”

“... a feeling for the men and their families. It was also political, for Reagan had capitalised on Jimmy Carter’s helplessness over the Iranian hostages to put the finishing touches to Carter’s defeat. Having lost Deaver, and now about to be hospitalised, Reagan wanted to free the hostages and not, like ...”

“... to all the jazz stuff – Bird, Dexter, Dizzy, Sonny, Miles, Ornette, Dolphy, the delectable Jimmy Giuffre – I’d filled several shopping bags with a small sampling of the rest of my CD collection, designed to satisfy whatever kind of recondite musical fix I might need on the road. Thus, all stacked up and ready to go were Conlon Nancarrow, Fatboy ...”