Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
by Jamie Raskin
View on GoodreadsMaryland Congressman Jamie Raskin's memoir interlacing two traumas — the suicide of his son Tommy on December 31, 2020, and his role as lead impeachment manager and Select Committee member in the weeks immediately after — into a single grief-and-democracy narrative.
Core ideas
- The structural choice is the book's most unusual feature: parallel narration of family loss and democratic crisis, each illuminating the other rather than competing for attention.
- Raskin's constitutional scholarship — he was a law professor before Congress — gives the impeachment-manager passages unusual depth; the second-impeachment trial is reconstructed with the participant's eye.
- The book's emotional weight is heavier than the other Jan-6-committee memoirs; it works at a register the others don't reach.
Published2022
Pages428
ISBN9780063209787
ReadJan 2024
