Romney: A Reckoning

Romney: A Reckoning is sourced from 45 interviews with Romney across two years,[1] The interviews were conducted weekly starting from the spring of 2021.[2] Coppins also used Romney's private diary entries from 2011 and text messages.[1] According to Politico, Coppins occasioally "[pressed] Romney in ways he did not always like".[3] Subsequently, they agreed for Romney to read the manuscript and for Coppins to "listen to his concerns" but not to have editorial control.[3][4]

The book covers Romney's political record, including the 2012 United States presidential election, his role as a senator, the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the Capitol, and Romney's opinions of Donald Trump.[5][6][7] In the book, Romney additionally expressed critical views of various Donald Trump and other Republicans.[1][8]

Romney: A Reckoning will be released on 24 October 2023.[9][10] According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the release of the book is "highly anticipated".[11]

In a review for The New York Times, Thomas Mallon stated that the book was "in many ways a straightforward biography", but described that it "has the intimacy of a small subgenre of political confessions".[1] Mallon also described much of the book's early part as headlong. Michael Luo from The New Yorker said that the book was instructive and "a rare feat in modern-day political reporting" in which "the subject engages in actual introspection".[2] A review in The Los Angeles Times called the book a "scoop-rich biography" and lauded the "tell-all details".[12]

Reviewing for The Washington Post, Alex Beam called the book "occasionally interesting and often a little bit bland", describing Romney himself as "the biggest disappointment of the book" and criticised that it was"more like a ghostwritten autobiography than a biography of record".[13] The book was also reviewed in The Wall Street Journal[4] and was previewed in New York Magazine.[14]