A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2020 A concise, brilliant, and trenchant
examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s successful lifelong quest for the
presidency by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos. President-elect Joseph
R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the
unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that
reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and
disappointments that he has suffered. Yet even as Biden’s life has been
shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top
ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors, and reversals of
fortune. As he says, “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but
giving up is unforgivable.” His trials have forged in him a deep empathy
for others in hardship—an essential quality as he leads America toward
recovery and renewal. Blending up-close journalism and broader context,
Evan Osnos, who won the National Book Award in 2014, draws on nearly a
decade of reporting for The New Yorker to capture the characters and
meaning of 2020’s extraordinary presidential election. It is based on
lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than
a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy
Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of activists, advisers, opponents,
and Biden family members. This portrayal illuminates Biden’s long and
eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama’s vice president,
his sojourn in the political wilderness after being passed over for Hillary
Clinton in 2016, his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency,
and his choice of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Osnos ponders
the difficulties Biden faces as his presidency begins and weighs how a
changing country, a deep well of experiences, and a rigorous approach to
the issues, have altered his positions. In this nuanced portrait, Biden
emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy—a man
who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.