This book seems to be more of a reference book than a "reading" book. ( )

I enjoyed reading thru this book. I probably would have been more interested if the Carter lines had matched my family's line. This was well documented, and for someone that is related this would be a great resource for you. ( )

My head is spinning. I have never read a genealogy book before and was astounded by the amount of information provided by Jeff Carter. He must have been researching for years and it is evident when he traces his ancestry back to 16th century England and Ireland.
That said, it was a difficult book to read because it was information dense. Because I am not related at all it was hard to keep all the names straight without a family tree diagram. The stories about fighting in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and other family issues were very interesting but not nearly enough to keep me glued to the book.
If you are doing research on any of these families, this book would be extremely helpful because it includes footnotes, bibliography and index. If you just want a good read, this is probably not the book for you. ( )

To me the greatest value in this book was the social history tied to each of the many ancestors reported, spread across several eastern seaboard states. A couple of the people mentioned are folks I recognized as being the same people as appear in my own family's history - something to add to my own research, in Maryland and North Carolina. Much of the social history from Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia was new to me, and I learned a lot and found it extremely interesting.

I have worked on a number of family history books, and thoroughly appreciated the great effort (and love) that went into this great work. Some researchers have nit-picked details that may or may not be correct. Those are the least of my concern. This extremely detailed, very complex report is a valuable contribution to the family and all of the people with whom the extended families reported have come in contact. The documentation is exceptional in quantity and sets a high standard for other families that may want to create such a book of their own. If you haven't actually done a complete book, such as this one, you cannot have sufficient understanding to criticize the work, in my opinion.

Thanks to Jeff, and those many folks who assisted him, and who went before him in the research, for sharing this bit of social history for the general public. ( )

Jeff Carter, son of President Jimmy Carter, has done a wonderful job of documenting his numerous ancestors but I wonder who he thought his audience would be. The endless listing of documents would only be of interest to a genealogist doing serious research but the same genealogist would be put off by the lack of any pedigree charts or numbering system to sort out how these people are related to each other. There are some wonderful pictures and some great stories, especially for those who lived in the most recent 150 years. A casual reader would have difficulty in trying to find these stories amid the rather dry listing of each person's vital statistics and records about them.