By Frye Gaillard (The University of Georgia Press, $19.95)

"The first time I saw Jimmy Carter was on a February night in North Carolina. The weather was terrible--a cold north wind whistling down from the mountains, carrying a mixture of sleet and freezing rain. I wondered what kind of crowd there would be, or if there would be a crowd at all, for this didn't seem like Carter country.

He was speaking that night at Wingate college, the alma mater of Senator jesse Helms, in the rolling farmlands southeast of Charlotte. I was startled to find, when I made it to the campus, that the Wingate auditorium was filled to overflowing--twenty-five hundred people crowded together in the warmth, cheering Carter's words, laughing at his jokes, asking him questions that were friendly and supportive.

"Mr. President," said one young man near the back of the hall, "I don't have a question, but I'd like to make a statement to you. During the recent presidential election, every time the Carter administration was mentioned, it always had negative overtones. And I'd like to assure you there are people here who were insulted by that. We really believe that due to your integrity, your emphasis on human rights, your struggle with the SALT treaty, that your administration--when viewed form the perspective of history and without biased politics--will be compared favorably with the Truman and Roosevelt administrations."

The crowd responded with sustained applause. Carter simply smiled. "Those are the kinds of questions I like," he said."--excerpted from book