Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum

This guide to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta centers on Desert One, a stretch of Iranian salt flat that the museum treats with more weight than any trophy on display. Past the replica Oval Office and the Nobel medal Carter would later win, you'll reach a room built around a single failed night in April 1980, when Carter approved a secret mission to free fifty-two Americans held hostage in Tehran. The guide follows Colonel Charles Beckwith's new Delta Force unit and the helicopters that flew into a sandstorm at Desert One, and what the museum chooses to display from that night rather than hide. Look for the small personal objects kept behind glass in that room.