A Boy from Georgia

Book excerpt: “The story of a young man waking to the fact that his family is on the wrong side of history.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution When Hamilton Jordan died in 2008, he left behind a mostly finished memoir. His daughter, Kathleen—with the help of her brothers and mother—took up the task of editing and completing the book. A Boy from Georgia—the result of this posthumous father-daughter collaboration—chronicles Hamilton Jordan’s childhood in Albany, Georgia, charting his moral and intellectual development as he gradually discovers the complicated legacies of racism, religious intolerance, and southern politics, and affords his readers an intimate view of the state’s wheelers and dealers. Jordan’s middle-class childhood was bucolic in some ways and traumatizing in others. As Georgia politicians battled civil rights leaders, a young Hamilton straddled the uncomfortable line between the southern establishment to which he belonged and the movement in which he believed. Fortunate enough to grow up in a family that had considerable political clout within Georgia, Jordan eventually became a key aide to Jimmy Carter and was the architect of Carter’s stunning victory in 1976, later serving as his chief of staff. Clear-eyed about the triumphs and tragedies of Jordan’s beloved home state and region, A Boy from Georgia tells the story of a remarkable life in a voice that is witty, vivid, and honest. “A delightful and inspiring coming-of-age story brimming with funny anecdotes, family mysteries, and political intrigue.”—Hank Klibanoff, coauthor of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation