Joe Biden

American National Book Award winner Evan Osnos has produced a focused, brilliant, and apt account of the successful life journey and 50-year political career of Joseph R. Biden Jr. However, it also shows that the life of the current American president has been marked by deep personal losses and disappointments.

Evan Osnos draws on his nearly a decade of reporting for The New Yorker magazine and manages to capture the extraordinary significance of the 2020 presidential election as well as portray the personalities of American politics. His book is based on lengthy interviews with Biden and the candid accounts of more than a hundred other actors, including President Barack Obama, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and a number of activists, advisors, members of Biden's family and his opponents. The book's portrait illuminates Biden's long and eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama's vice president, and his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency and his choice of Senator Kamala Harris as his vice presidential nominee. Osnos reflects on the difficulties Biden will face during his presidency and considers how the changing landscape and vast array of experiences have changed his positions on particular issues. In this precise portrait, Biden emerges as a flawed yet decisive politician hardened by life's tragedies - a man perhaps unexpectedly well suited to his current historical role.

Evan Osnos (born 1976) is an American journalist and author. Since 2008, he has been a contributor to The New Yorker magazine, where he focuses on American and foreign policy. In addition to profiles of Joe Biden and Mark Zuckerberg, he covered the history of the Republican Party and the dispute over North Korea's nuclear programme. He spent eight years in China as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune and subsequently published Age of Ambition. Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (Age of Desire. The Search for Happiness, Truth and Faith in the New China), for which he received the U.S. National Book Award. He also works with the television station CNN. He lives in Washington, D.  C.

"It's impossible to put down Osnos' biography without feeling a deep respect for what Biden had to overcome to get to where he is now."

The Guardian

"Osnos offers a brilliant analysis. [...] The result is a smart and inspiring portrait of a man on his way to the presidency."

Publishers Weekly