Original Sin

Damning and well-documented.

TELEGRAPH

A scathing account of an elderly, egotistical president cocooned from reality seeking re-election in 2024 despite significant concerns about his declining health and cognitive abilities.

GUARDIAN

Tapper and Thompson's portrait of a decrepit American president is devastating... Original Sin succeeds because it has a strong thesis and an arresting narrative, delivered in made-for-TV episodes.

FINANCIAL TIMES

A fascinating insight... this book shines a blinding light on the extent to which Joe Biden was ageing rapidly, becoming tired and confused and patently unfit for a second term in office.

iNEWS

Explosive . . . Tapper and Thompson have done the [Democratic] party a favor. Some sort of reckoning is due for the disastrous missteps that that paved the way for Trump’s return.

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, co-author of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

[The] most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline, which was written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson and draws on hundreds of interviews . . . To their credit, they do little editorializing. The book is written not unlike an autopsy report, describing a gruesome political car crash in dispassionate, clinical detail.

ATLANTIC

Superbly reported . . . Reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Original Sin is not really a 'campaign book'—its account of the 2024 election largely ends after Biden drops out—but its simple assessment of the race is more compelling than anything else I’ve read about it . . . Original Sin is rarely better than when Tapper and Thompson are writing—with extensive reporting and clear-eyed prose—about the disaster that Biden caused . . . Over the next year, dozens of books will appear that attempt to explain this election. It’s hard to imagine any doing better than that.

WASHINGTON POST

A damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, ageing president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term.

NEW YORK TIMES

Original Sin is a comprehensively sourced autopsy of the agonised end to Biden’s 50-year career. It’s accusatory, indignant, righteous – and convincing.

NEW STATESMAN

An authoritative indictment of a denial-plagued presidential run . . . This tough yet fair account of an ageing president’s inauspicious reelection campaign makes a strong case that voters deserve to know more about their commander-in-chief’s health.

KIRKUS

It’s hard to think of a book which has shifted the political dial to this extent in recent years.

POLITICO

How American voters became victims of one of the great poltiical cover-ups of modern times . . . It was the gaslighting of a nation.

THE TIMES

Destined to stand alongside classics like Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1960 and even Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s All the President’s Men as one of the great books about American electoral politics.

RICHARD ALDOUS, author of Persuasion

A necessary and deeply disturbing account of the Biden White House. For anyone interested in politics and Shakespearean tragedy, there’s something on every page.

ROLLING STONE

A bombshell book . . . damning revelations

INDEPENDENT

Original Sin has captured the Zeitgeist in a way rare for political books not centered on Donald Trump. The best-selling, heavily reported exposé by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson paints a picture of President Joe Biden’s rapid physical and mental deterioration in office.

NEW YORK MAGAZINE