NOW OUT IN PAPERBACK
WITH A NEW AFTERWORD

New York Times Bestseller
A New Yorker Best Book of 2023
An NPR Best Book of 2023

A remarkable, authoritative biography of one of America’s most fascinating political figures, filled with news-making revelations and written by an award-winning journalist at The Atlantic

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 U.S. 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, exclusively for this biography, Romney has provided a window to his most private thoughts.

Based on dozens of exclusive 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.

Ultimately, Romney: A Reckoning is a redemptive story about a flawed politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life.

Praise for Romney: A Reckoning

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“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 biography for our times.”
Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of New York Times bestseller The Soul of America

“What’s remarkable and rare about Romney: A Reckoning isn’t that Mitt Romney is brutally honest about those around him but that he is brutally honest about himself. Tapping hours of interviews and access to 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 in the struggle between political power and principle.”
Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief at USA Today and author of New York Times bestseller Madam Speaker

“An extraordinary biography. Much of the fun comes from eavesdropping on the shameless things the political class is apt to say beyond 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

“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, Wall Street Journal columnist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary