Romney: A Reckoning

by McKay Coppins Narrated by Jonathan Davis, McKay Coppins

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! In this illuminating and “scoop-rich biography...the tell-all tales rush forth” (Los Angeles Times) offering a “penetrating analysis of the ongoing Republican civil war through the eyes of one of its last embattled centrists” (Publishers Weekly).

Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump's GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president's supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection. Despite these moments of public courage, Romney has shared very little about what he's witnessed behind the scenes over his three decades in politics-in GOP cloakrooms and caucus lunches, in his private meetings with Donald Trump and his family, in his dealings with John McCain, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. Now, Romney provides a window to his most private thoughts.

Based on dozens of interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals and private emails, this in-depth portrait by award-winning journalist McKay Coppins shows a public servant authentically wrestling with the choices he has made over his career. In lively, revelatory detail, the book traces Romney's early life and rise through the ranks of a fast-transforming Republican Party and exposes how a trail of seemingly small compromises by political leaders has led to a crisis in democracy. “A rare feat in modern-day political reporting” (The New Yorker), Romney: A Reckoning is a redemptive story about a complex politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A New Yorker Best Book of 2023
An NPR Best Book of 2023

“Engrossing...one of the best political books I’ve read in years, and it provides key insights into how drastically the Republican Party has shifted in the decade since Romney was its presidential nominee.”
—Scott Detrow, host of NPR’s All Things Considered

“Revealing...Romney: A Reckoning is in many ways a straightforward biography, but it has the intimacy of a small subgenre of political confessions...throughout Coppins’s narrative Trump, the supposed billionaire, morphs from comic relief into devouring nemesis....While should-have-known-better Republican colleagues waffled...Romney kept his head above the fetid waters.”
—Tom Mallon, New York Times

“A scoop-rich biography...An especially clear window onto the forces that over the last decade have transformed the GOP....Coppins gained extraordinary access...The tell-all tales gush forth.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Rare access...a reminder that meritocratic success in business is not easily translatable into democratic politics. What lessons should one draw from a wealthy, talented and decent man who attempts to lead a political party in the throes of a populist revolt? Above all, take care not to sacrifice one’s family, faith, and integrity.”
—Wall Street Journal

“An astonishing, nearly unprecedented catalog of intraparty critique... it’s also, and maybe all the more importantly, a deft study of the capacity for rationalization...this is what makes this book so interesting, and also important.”
—Politico

“A rare feat in modern-day political reporting: an account in which the subject engages in actual introspection.”
—New Yorker

“The soon-to-be ex-senator shared a vast trove with biographer McKay Coppins for this book [which] has already scored in the marketplace of tittle-tattle, yielding several items worthy of Page Six, if not Page One. Coppins adds considerable value.”
—Washington Post

“A complex book about a complex man, one that provides an unusually revelatory look at a prominent political figure’s private views and inner conflicts.”
—Boston Globe

“[A] probing biography...a penetrating analysis of the ongoing Republican civil war through the eyes of one of its last embattled centrists.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A memorable distillation of a life in politics, of the tension between high principle and unseemly justification. It’s a tension Romney has navigated better than most, in part for his willingness to acknowledge its existence.”
—Carlos Lozada, New York Times

“A must-read for anyone interested in how the Republican party morphed from the part of Lincoln into a Trumpian mess.”
—The Guardian

“Revealing, with unvarnished opinions and stories of what happens behind closed doors in the famously clubby United States Senate.”
—CBS Sunday Morning

“Searing.”
—MSNBC Morning Joe

“A useful study of a man who, witnessing the disintegration of his party into demagoguery and lies, decided to stand for the truth...A vigorous, highly readable account of politics—and ethics—in action.”
—Kirkus

“Remarkable. Tapping hours of interviews and access to Mitt Romney’s private journals—and revealing a captivating array of insider moments—author McKay Coppins compellingly portrays a man wrestling with his conscience as he tries to do what’s right.”
—Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief at USA Today and author of Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power

“An extraordinary biography. Much of the fun comes from eavesdropping on the shameless things the political class is apt to say behind closed doors. The chance to inhabit those rooms is frequently as entertaining as it is depressing.”
—Mark Leibovich, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers This Town and Thank You for Your Servitude

“As the emerging Edward Gibbon of American conservatism, McKay Coppins has written an important, vivid, and memorable portrait of that rare Republican soul who has had the courage to choose the difficult over the easy path in our tumultuous age. Mitt Romney is not perfect, but he has put principle above the strictly partisan in hours when virtually no one else had the wherewithal to do so. This is an essential book for our times.”
—Jon Meacham, author of the New York Times bestsellers And There Was Light and The Soul of America

“McKay Coppins is a superb reporter and a first-class thinker...With this book he comes forward as a first-class biographer, too.”
—Peggy Noonan, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

Kirkus Reviews

2023-10-20
A portrait of an old-school conservative politico who found new resolve as an anti-Trump Republican.

Atlantic writer Coppins, author of The Wilderness, opens on January 2, 2021, as Romney tried to alert Mitch McConnell to reports that something bad was brewing around the Capitol. Four days later, Romney would be among the besieged politicians. Clearly, it’s not company he relished: Coppins shows how the Utah senator holds most of his Republican colleagues in contempt. Romney considers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz the smartest people in the Senate, but in their support of overturning the election and abetting the rioters, he notes, “they were making a calculation…that put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.” Coppins allows that he showed Romney a draft of the book with the understanding that his subject had no editorial control over it, and that the senator objected only that the author had “made too much of his transformation in the Trump years.” Yet that transformation was both complete and multifaceted. When he ran for president in 2012, Romney solicited Trump’s endorsement, which allowed Trump to boast, “I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees,’ [and] he would have dropped to his knees.” From the moment Trump announced his candidacy, Romney knew that he was a danger to the republic. Though one report Coppins offers as fact has been the subject of vigorous objection—he writes that Oprah Winfrey offered to run an independent campaign with Romney in 2020, while Winfrey says she didn’t offer herself as running mate but did in fact encourage Romney to run—the writing is solid, and the author provides a useful study of a man who, witnessing the disintegration of his party into demagoguery and lies, decided to stand for the truth.

A vigorous, highly readable account of politics—and ethics—in action.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159744982
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos