by James Wooten
“Dasher” was the code name the Secret Service used for candidate Jimmy Carter, and Wooten, White House correspondent of the New York Times, stored up facts about him the way a dog collects bones and fleas—indiscriminately. Then, when he turned his coverage of the Carter presidential campaign into a book, he presented his material in narrative form. The writing is not felicitous, and Carter’s growing-up years read like a Southern white trash novel—a Tobacco Road about a family that could afford its own tennis court. We also learn that Carter slept in Jockey shorts pre-Inauguration night as well as that he suffers from hemorrhoids. Too much and not enough. (Summit Books, $11.95)