Renegade

Adam Kinzinger spent a decade in the House of Representatives as a Republican from Illinois, and in this memoir he looks back on how that career ended up putting him at odds with his own party. The book is built around January 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the US Capitol in an effort to overturn the presidential election. Kinzinger treats that day as the result of a political and cultural split he had watched widen for years, not as a sudden break.

He starts with his earliest steps in public life on a small county board in Illinois, then moves to his years as an Air Force pilot flying tanker missions over Iraq. From there he follows his path into Congress and through his last, turbulent term. He was one of very few Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump, and he later took a seat on the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Throughout, he explains the choices he made and what they cost him.

Kinzinger writes about faith, military service and the duties of an elected official, and he argues that criticizing his party from inside had stopped being enough. He examines the growth of extremism and the way the Republican Party became, in his view, dysfunctional and destructive. The book is blunt and personal, and it ends with an appeal for the country to find common ground again.