After a successful launch of the Masters Series last summer, join author André Bernard, Vice President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for a second season of conversations with literary masters. On August 9, Bernard speaks with political analyst and author, Jonathan Alter.

Jonathan Alter is a longtime political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Bloomberg, the Daily Beast, and The New York Times.  He is the author of four political biographies: The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies (2013); The Promise: President Obama, Year One (2010); The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2006); and, most recently, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life (2020), which the Washington Post called “one of the best in a celebrated genre of presidential biography.” 

His Very Best is an epic story of an enigmatic man of faith and his improbable journey from barefoot boy to global icon. Alter paints an intimate and surprising portrait of the only president since Thomas Jefferson who can fairly be called a Renaissance Man, a complex figure—ridiculed and later revered—with a piercing intelligence, prickly intensity, and biting wit beneath the patented smile. Here is a moral exemplar for our times, a flawed but underrated president of decency and vision who was committed to telling the truth to the American people. According to The New York Times Book Review, this “important, fair-minded, highly readable contribution” will change our understanding of perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history.

Interested in becoming a Mount Member? Join today!

The Mount’s general COVID-19 Health and Safety Guidelines can be found here.

The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event.