In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the forty-five days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his life—and his family’s—as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. 

“My book was a labor of love for Tommy and my family, but also for our country. I’m on a mission of hope. There are millions of hurting people in the country. We’ve lost more than eight hundred thousand people to covid-19—which means eight hundred thousand grief-stricken families. There are comparable numbers in the opioid crisis, the epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse, a staggering mental-health crisis. We have to bring people some hope. We have to make it clear that part of the solution to despondency is to engage in politics and to fight back.”

Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma, detailing how the painful loss of his son and the power of Tommy’s convictions fueled the Congressman’s work in the aftermath of modern democracy’s darkest day. Going inside Congress on January 6, he recounts the horror of that day, a day that he and other Democrats had spent months preparing for under the correct assumption that they would encounter an attempted electoral coup—not against a President but for one. And yet, on January 6, he faced the one thing he had failed to anticipate: mass political violence designed to block Biden’s election. With an inside account of leading the team prosecuting President Trump in the Senate, Congressman Raskin shares never before told stories of just how close we came to losing our democracy that fateful day and lays out the methodical prosecution that convinced Democrats and Republicans alike of Trump’s responsibility for inciting insurrectionary violence against our government. 

The U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District and Lead House Manager during the second Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, which ended with a 57-43 vote to convict the president for inciting a violent insurrection against the government to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.