For Carter’s Mideast book, a milder title

Former President Jimmy Carter has written a new book on the Middle East with a title he hopes will not be as controversial as the last one, which was called “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

Carter, 84, said that “We Can Bring Peace to the Holy Land” will be published in January, just after the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

“I was going to call it ‘Yes, We Can.’ My wife talked me out of it,” Carter joked toward the end of a panel discussion on human rights at the Carter Center in Atlanta this week. He offered no further details on the new text, to be published by Simon & Schuster.