Original Sin

“A damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term.” —The New York Times

“Original Sin is not really a ‘campaign book’—its account of the 2024 election largely ends after Biden drops out—but its simple assessment of the race is more compelling than anything else I’ve read about it . . . Original Sin is rarely better than when Tapper and Thompson are writing—with extensive reporting and clear-eyed prose—about the disaster that Biden caused . . . Over the next year, dozens of books will appear that attempt to explain this election. It’s hard to imagine any doing better than that.” —The Washington Post

“A reconstruction of what Democrats should have known and when they should have known it.” —Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show

“Explosive . . . Tapper and Thompson have done the [Democratic] party a favor. Some sort of reckoning is due for the disastrous missteps that that paved the way for Trump’s return.” — Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“The big political book of the moment . . . The power of Original Sin is its relentless marshaling of such insider scenes — the admissions, regrets and recriminations within the White House and the campaign — as the president continued to falter.” — Carlos Lozada, The New York Times

“[The] most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline, which was written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson and draws on hundreds of interviews . . . To their credit, they do little editorializing. The book is written not unlike an autopsy report, describing a gruesome political car crash in dispassionate, clinical detail.” —The Atlantic

“A devastating account of Biden’s decline and the extent of the White House cover-up . . . I’m convinced that deep institutional soul-searching is due in many quarters, and that this conversation is too important to delay.” —Megan McArdle, The Washington Post

“For historians, the book is destined to stand alongside classics like Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1960 and even Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s All the President’s Men as one of the great books about American electoral politics.” —Richard Aldous, Persuasion

“A monumental piece of reporting.” —Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring newsletter

“A deeply-reported and damning portrait of an active cover-up by the advisers closest to Joe Biden.” —Chris Cillizza, So What newsletter

“A necessary and deeply disturbing account of the Biden White House. For anyone interested in politics and Shakespearean tragedy, there’s something on every page.” —Rolling Stone

“Their portrait of a decrepit American president is devastating . . . Original Sin succeeds because it has a strong thesis and an arresting narrative, delivered in made-for-TV episodes. The prose is punchy and so are the quotes.” —Lionel Barber, The Financial Times

“An authoritative, detailed, and devastating account of one of the most consequential scandals in modern American history.” —The Dispatch

“Original Sin is a comprehensively sourced autopsy of the agonised end to Biden’s 50-year career. It’s accusatory, indignant, righteous – and convincing.” —The New Statesman

“Original Sin both asks and answers troubling questions about health and the world‘s most powerful political office. And it creates a highly detailed historical record along the way.” —The Globe and Mail

“Drawing on extensive interviews with Biden administration insiders, Tapper and Thompson paint an intricate, appalling panorama of hubris and delusion . . . The result is a colorful and telling indictment of the blinkered self-interest that rules American politics.” —Publishers Weekly

“An authoritative indictment of a denial-plagued presidential run . . . This tough yet fair account of an aging president’s inauspicious reelection campaign makes a strong case that voters deserve to know more about their commander-in-chief’s health.” —Kirkus