At turns, a moving story of a father coping with his pain and a revealing examination of holding President Trump accountable for the violence he fomented, this book is a vital reminder of the ongoing struggle for the soul of American democracy and the perseverance that our Constitution demands from us all. Through it all, he reckons with the loss of his brilliant, remarkable son, a Harvard Law student whose values and memory continually inspired the Congressman to confront the dark impulses unleashed by Donald Trump. With an inside account of leading the team prosecuting President Trump in the Senate, Congressman Raskin shares never before told stories of just how close we came to losing our democracy that fateful day and lays out the methodical prosecution that convinced Democrats and Republicans alike of Trump’s responsibility for inciting insurrectionary violence against our government. And yet, on January 6, he faced the one thing he had failed to anticipate: mass political violence designed to block Biden’s election. Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma, detailing how the painful loss of his son and the power of Tommy’s convictions fueled the Congressman’s work in the aftermath of modern democracy’s darkest day. Going inside Congress on January 6, he recounts the horror of that day, a day that he and other Democrats had spent months preparing for under the correct assumption that they would encounter an attempted electoral coup-not against a President but for one. Together this nine-member team of House impeachment managers riveted a nation still in anguish, putting on an unprecedented Senate trial that produced the most bipartisan Presidential impeachment vote in American history. As our reeling nation mourned the deaths of numerous people and lamented the injuries of more than 140 police officers hurt in the attack, Congressman Raskin, a Constitutional law professor, was called upon to put aside his overwhelming grief-both personal and professional-and lead the impeachment effort against President Trump for inciting the violence. Capitol hoping to hand four more years of power to President Donald Trump. On December 31, 2020, Tommy Raskin, the only son of Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, tragically took his own life after a long struggle with depression. Seven days later on January 6, Congressman Raskin returned to Congress to help certify the 2020 Presidential election results, when violent insurrectionists led by right wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. As he told Vogue’s Nathan Heller, “Trauma can put you in touch with other people’s difficulties and pain and longing in a way that you were never able to be before.” He became a key player in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump and he currently sits on the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 th insurrection hoping to ensure that such an event would never occur again.In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the forty-five days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his life-and his family’s-as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. The Congressman’s way of dealing with his grief was to throw himself back into the fray and take on a leadership role in Congress, especially around those issues that he believed constituted a moral imperative. Yet, the very poignancy of Raskin’s narrative is, I imagine, why I am so struck by his experience. The profound intersection in Congressman Raskin’s life makes the incidents and anecdotes in my own story pale, almost to the point of invisibility. In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the forty-five days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his lifeand his family’sas he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump. This is a principal theme in my own book, Beyond the Comma where I posit that we become fuller human beings as we connect life-changing moments in our personal lives (I call them “comma moments”) with broader, shared events in our communities. According to news accounts, Raskin’s book (transparency dictates that I tell you I have not yet read it) draws on the intersection of this deeply personal pain against a backdrop of national trauma.
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