American Scoundrel

‘A propulsive, mind-boggling read … Kai Bird pins this alternate moral universe to the page brilliantly and even-handedly’ – Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Cleopatra: A Life and The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams ‘Powerful and illuminating … Roy Cohn is emblematic of dark and perennial forces in our national life … Bird has delivered a vital volume’ – Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels ‘The definitive book on Roy Cohn … Cohn’s influence on our time is incalculable and we are living in the long shadow of his legacy … American Scoundrel is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand Donald Trump’s America’ – Jeremy Strong, Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony-winning actor, and Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice ‘An extraordinary, up-close view of Cohn’s internal wiring … A brilliantly reported and vividly written biography that will mesmerize readers from its opening pages’ – Ken Auletta, longtime contributor to The New Yorker and bestselling author of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It ‘A must-read for these dark days. To understand the president who has hurled this country into chaos, we must tap the root – get to the source. American Scoundrel does just that by detailing the life of Roy Cohn. It is, in the end, a thorough and poignant account of a moral monster’ – Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries ‘A narrative masterwork. With a scholar’s rigor and a novelist’s sense of drama, Bird vividly creates the sinister web of charm and deceit that Cohn was able to spin through his decades at the very center of power’ – Marie Brenner, award-winning writer-at-large for Vanity Fair, author of The Desperate Hours and coproducer of the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? ‘Kai Bird does the impossible. He tells the story of one of America’s arch villains, with new evidence of his mendacity, contempt for the law, megalomania and cruelty, but does so without descending into caricature’ – David Nasaw, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Patriarch ‘A must-read for anyone who wants to understand not just the dark role played by Roy Cohn in twentieth-century American politics, but the man’s lasting influence into this century … There is, it turns out, a direct line from the malign influence of McCarthyism to that of Trumpism, and Roy Cohn is it’ – Susan Glasser, staff writer for The New Yorker and bestselling coauthor of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 ‘Gripping … If you want to understand America today, you (sadly!) need to understand Donald Trump. And if you want to understand Trump, you need to understand Roy Cohn. This book is invaluable for that task’ – William Kristol, formerly Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States and founder of The Weekly Standard; currently, editor-at-large of The Bulwark

Kai Bird is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. His other books include The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). Bird’s many honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation. A contributing editor of the Nation, he lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, with his wife and son.

Susan Goldmark, Kai Bird’s wife and chief researcher, has worked in over seventy-five countries—in consulting, for nonprofits, and at the World Bank. She was a World Bank Country Director in Nepal and later in Latin America. She holds a BA from Carleton College and a graduate degree in development economics from Princeton University. Susan has been Kai’s muse for decades and led the research for American Scoundrel.