American Scoundrel
Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump
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American Scoundrel
Narrated by:
Ari Fliakos
Buy Now for $31.40
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Narrated by:
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Ari Fliakos
Summary
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of American Prometheus, inspiration for the box-office sensation Oppenheimer, a penetrating biography of super-lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, whose shocking exploits over four decades have shaped the modern political era, most prominently the ascent of Donald Trump.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the many dramas of American political life had one common denominator: Roy Cohn. In his twenties, the infamous young prosecutor sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, and as the chief aide to Senator Joe McCarthy became the baby-faced symbol of ruthless communist-hunting. By his thirties, Cohn had begun working as the Mafia’s hired legal gun. In his forties, he was an informal adviser to Richard Nixon. In his fifties, he partied with the glitterati at Studio 54 and visited the Reagan White House, where he traded gossip with the first lady. Perhaps most significantly, Cohn mentored the young and ambitious Donald Trump, who telephoned the older man daily and studiously emulated not only his mannerisms but also his core philosophies.
Years after his death in 1986 from AIDS-related complications, Cohn emerged as a central figure in Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America. Cohn’s feistiness, his surly defiance – and sometimes his charm – were frequently flourished to conceal vast insecurities, particularly regarding his closeted sexuality.
A street fighter and self-promoting hustler, Cohn was a nefarious actor in a startling number of history-shaping events whose influence resonates to the present day. Drawing on deep archival research, original interviews and newly available material, American Scoundrel is an authoritative portrait of Cohn and an unsettling examination of how corruption, grievance and media spectacle moved into the centre of American public life.
Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark, New York Times bestseller, September 2026
Critic Reviews
‘A masterful biography . . . In their superlative biography, American Scoundrel, authors Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark sum up this wicked man . . . a gripping, frightening book, meticulously researched, about a terrible person – one whom I’d not even want to dignify as a sort of Richard III or Tony Soprano’ (Roger Lewis)
‘A book Trumpworld doesn’t want you to read . . . a propulsive, horrifying biography of Roy Cohn’ (Martin Pengelly)
'A gripping and revelatory new biography' (Christopher Grimes)
'A thorough and readable account of Cohn’s astonishing life and career . . . an elegant retelling of the lurid Cohn story . . . recounts Cohn’s eventful life in well-chosen detail' (Jennifer Szalai)
'An enjoyably good biography of a genuinely awful person'
‘A definitive modern biography . . . a riveting, authoritative and page-turning account of a public figure as consequential as he was wicked . . . intrinsically fascinating because of its subject, also establishes beyond doubt the indispensable role that Cohn played in the formation and rise of the 45th and 47th president’ (Matthew d'Ancona)
'I gobbled up every page of Kai Bird’s American Scoundrel . . . This is a dirty story but, as Bird notes, one that has turned out to be seminal in American politics . . . The book is a bounteous cornucopia of midcentury sleaze and uneasily addictive for just that reason. It’s got Mafia hits and frame jobs and blackmail and bribery and election tampering. It’s got forgery and insurance scams and perjury and espionage and sex trafficking and a lot of tax evasion. It makes James Ellroy novels look like Theo of Golden by comparison, and it makes for mesmerising reading' (Laura Miller)
‘Revelatory . . . Set to be one of the most explosive books of the year . . . Prometheus gives way to Mephistopheles; pages turn wickedly fast . . . The venality and corruption, blackmail and sheer brazenness of the public lying Bird portrays is eye-popping, infuriating, disgusting – yet also, at times, darkly comic . . . If you want to understand Donald Trump, read this book’
'A how-we-got-here book, showing how Cohn’s guile, paranoia and shamelessness guided McCarthy, rubbed off on Trump and stuck fast to America . . . The Cohn-Trump parallels are evident on nearly every page . . . Reading American Scoundrel, I sometimes wondered why the title wasn’t plural' (Carlos Lozada)
'An astonishing biography . . . The book excels as a masterful dissection of Cohn’s strange, contradictory and immoral character . . . It adds up to an extraordinary portrait of a singular American figure whose callousness and brazenness continue to mar the country 40 years after his death'
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