To many people, Jimmy Carter provided Americans with an ideal model of post-presidential life. In fact, some consider him to be the nation's greatest former president. He emerged as a champion of human rights and worked for several charitable causes.

To that end, Carter founded the Carter Presidential Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The center, which opened in 1982, promotes democracy and human rights and supports efforts to eradicate diseases that afflict people in developing countries. Additionally, Carter worked with Habitat for Humanity, an organization that provides housing for underprivileged people. Through such projects, Carter maintained a high profile and was often seen on television, helping with Habitat home construction or providing opinions on issues of the day.

As a president who was deeply embroiled in foreign crises during his term in office, Carter took opportunities to apply his experiences and knowledge on the world stage. He served as a freelance ambassador for a variety of international missions, including soothing disputes between countries, observing elections in nations with histories of fraudulent voting processes, and advising presidents on Middle East issues. He was involved in mediating disputes between the US State Department and the most volatile of foreign leaders, including Kim Il Sung of North Korea and Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. In 1994, the former president assisted the US government as it settled a tension-filled nuclear weapons dispute with North Korea.

In his post-presidential life, Carter wrote over thirty books, including Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1983), Turning Point (1992), and An Hour Before Daylight (2001).