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 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 Vice President 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.
