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American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump
Author(s): Kai Bird (Author), Susan Goldmark (Author)
- Publisher: Scribner
- Publication Date: September 1, 2026
- Language: English
- Print length: 528 pages
- ISBN-10: 1668031574
- ISBN-13: 9781668031575
Book Description
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 significant, Cohn mentored the young Donald Trump, who telephoned the older man daily and studiously emulated not only his mannerisms but 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, yes, his charm—were frequently flourished to conceal vast insecurities, particularly regarding his closeted sexuality.A street fighter, self-promoting hustler, and a true Zelig of the dark side, Cohn was a nefarious actor in a startling number of history-shaping events whose influence resonates to the present day.
Editorial Reviews
Review
—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
“A book Trumpworld doesn’t want you to read…a propulsive, horrifying biography.”
“A gripping and revelatory new biography.”
“In
American Scoundrel, the master biographer Kai Bird points us to a universe where ideology matters less than crass opportunism in the pursuit of money, sex, and power—where extreme narcissists will shatter everything around them to get their way. This was Roy Cohn’s world; Donald Trump is his inheritor….American Scoundrel will remind anyone outraged by our current culture that ‘elite impunity’ is nothing new. Then, as now, power and celebrity attracted allies.”—Martin Di Caro, The American Conservative
“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 mesmerizing reading.”—Laura Miller, Slate
“Roy Marcus Cohn was the kingmaker from hell…Cohn’s brutish course through the corridors of power was, to a large extent, a template for Trump’s later on. In their new book
American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, biographer Kai Bird and his wife and chief researcher, Susan Goldmark, tell the long, sordid tale of how one ‘narcissistic con artist’—as they characterize Cohn —did so much to create another, the man who now occupies the most powerful office in the world.”—Foreign Affairs
“Effective…Bird gives us a new way to think about Cohn, Trump, and the legacy of McCarthyism…Looking at the long arc of Cohn’s career shows how much of McCarthyism was about ambition and careerism, rather than ideology. Cohn’s friends and clients were obsequious to him because they thought he could get them things no one else could.”
“A magisterial biography of the notorious lawyer and Trump whisperer that is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the current political moment.”
“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.”
“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 comprehensive portrait of a truculent lawyer who shot to infamy in the 1950s and remained a scandalous figure until his death…A thorough, deeply reported life story of the gleefully villainous lawyer who molded a U.S. president.”
“This deeply researched, admirably balanced, and propulsively paced biography is key to understanding the current political culture.”
“A PROPULSIVE, MIND BOGGLING READ… Kai Bird pins this alternate moral universe to the page brilliantly and even-handedly.”
“POWERFUL AND ILLUMINATING…Roy Cohn is emblematic of dark and perennial forces in our national life…Bird has delivered a vital volume.”
—Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
“THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON ROY COHN…Cohn’s influence on our time is incalculable and we are living in the long shadow of his legacy….
American Scoundrel is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand Donald Trump’s America.”—Jeremy Strong, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Tony-winning actor, and Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice
“AN EXTRAORDINARY, UP-CLOSE VIEW OF COHN’S INTERNAL WIRING…A brilliantly reported and vividly written biography that will mesmerize readers from its opening pages.”
“A MUST-READ FOR THESE DARK DAYS. To understand the president who has hurled this country into chaos, we must tap the root—get to the source.
American Scoundrel does just that by detailing the life of Roy Cohn. It is, in the end, a thorough and poignant account of a moral monster.”—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries
“A NARRATIVE MASTERWORK. With a scholar’s rigor and a novelist’s sense of drama, Bird vividly creates the sinister web of charm and deceit that Cohn was able to spin through his decades at the very center of power.”
“KAI BIRD DOES THE IMPOSSIBLE. He tells the story of one of America’s arch villains, with new evidence of his mendacity, contempt for the law, megalomania, and cruelty, but does so without descending into caricature.”
“A MUST-READ FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND NOT JUST THE DARK ROLE PLAYED BY ROY COHN IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POLITICS, BUT THE MAN’S LASTING INFLUENCE INTO THIS CENTURY….There is, it turns out, a direct line from the malign influence of McCarthyism to that of Trumpism, and Roy Cohn is it.”
“GRIPPING…If you want to understand America today, you (sadly!) need to understand Donald Trump. And if you want to understand Trump, you need to understand Roy Cohn. This book is invaluable for that task.”
About the Author
Susan Goldmark, Kai Bird’s wife and chief researcher, has worked in over seventy-five countries—in consulting, for nonprofits, and at the World Bank. She was a World Bank Country Director in Nepal and later in Latin America. She holds a BA from Carleton College and a graduate degree in development economics from Princeton University. Susan has been Kai’s muse for decades and led the research for
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