Even two years after his Peace Corps stint, it's still a theme that stirs Carter's passion. "We have the luxury of saying that we weren't personally affected by apartheid--and it is a luxury," he says, while on a summer book tour through North Carolina. "But you're talking about a country that produced four Nobel Peace Prize winners, and 90 percent of the people never got an opportunity to express themselves to the world. Who knows how many great things could have come out of South Africa had it not been for apartheid?"

Lunchtime: Carter buys roasted maize for lunch from a vendor at the local "taxi ranks" photo louise gubb © national geographic society

The impetus for the book came at the prompting of his grandfather, who urged him to keep a journal of his time in South Africa. Upon his return, Carter was invited to speak about his experiences at the National Geographic annual general meeting, where his grandfather was the keynote speaker. Impressed by his illuminating recollections, lively wit, and ability to weave political and historical threads through his speech, National Geographic executive vice president Terry Adamson invited Carter to craft the journal into a book. He spent the better part of the next year in the New York Public Library, writing out pages in longhand, then typing in the text at night in his apartment.

Despite the often sober subject matter, Carter's curiosity and self-effacing humor shine through in the work. Like his grandfather, his easy-going Southern charm and natural ease in connecting with strangers proved particularly apt in South Africa. "There is a concept in Africa called ubuntu, which means that everyone is fundamentally connected rather than fundamentally individual," he says. "It's that idea of community, the human element, that I hope people will take away from this book."

Carter confesses that he wasn't as "directed" as he should have been as an undergraduate, but he nonetheless credits his years at Duke with laying the essential groundwork for his Peace Corps assignment. A political science major, he took such demanding courses as James B. Duke Professor of English Reynolds Price's seminar on Milton; political science professor Robert Keohane's transnational relations class; and philosophy professor Alasdair MacIntyre's nineteenth-century philosophy and twentieth-century continental philosophy courses.

James Hamilton, associate professor of public policy, says he first became aware of Carter when he asked students in his "Introduction to Policy Analysis" course to write, anonymously, about any political experiences and/or general interest in the subject. "Usually students write things like, I was the president of my senior class in high school," recalls Hamilton. "Then I got to a card that said, 'Grandfather was president of the United States.' So I did some asking around."

Carter revealed his family connections judiciously. "For a long time, I didn't know he was Jimmy Carter's grandson," says Thomas Bates '97, who roomed with Carter sophomore through senior year. "That was not something he advertised. He's an engaging, personable guy in his own right and doesn't need that entrÈe to impress people."

Classmate and Kappa Sigma fraternity brother Keith Cossrow recalls one afternoon when he, Carter, and several other first-year students were hanging out discussing a range of issues. The conversation turned to race. "We knew who he was, but it wasn't something anyone mentioned," he says. "Still, I kept baiting him--'What do you think, Jason?'--and he wouldn't participate. Finally, he just busted out and talked for nearly an hour straight about his views. His face was red. And we all quickly realized we were out of our league."

Cossrow also credits Carter with inventing the name and concept of the Kappa Sigs' legendary "Go To Hell" party. "Due to housing policy changes, our fraternity was moved from the prime real estate of the main quad on West Campus to Edens quad, and we were really upset," says Cossrow. "But once we got there we realized it was a cool place to have parties--there's a nice courtyard and big front yard. So Jason came up with the 'Go To Hell' idea to say, in other words, West is dead; Go to Hell!"

Carter's other extracurricular activities included many afternoons playing shuffleboard at the Green Room, an off-campus pool hall, and intense sessions on the Sony Playstation game "Tomb Raider." Perhaps not surprisingly, his personal sense of fastidiousness was still, uh, developing.

"Our approach to cleaning was to let everything just go all the way," recalls roommate Bates. "We performed no interim maintenance. With laundry, we'd just throw all our clothes in a big pile. I remember one time we didn't have any clean clothes left so we piled all our dirty clothes together and took it to the Washtub," the campus self-serve and drop-off laundromat. "We had 100 pounds of clothes."