Unthinkable Trauma, truth, and the trials of American democracy

ldquo;If a person can grow through unthinkable trauma and loss, perhaps a nation may, too." That is the credo that shaped this dramatic and illuminating, generous and magnificent chronicle of personal and public anguish and action. On the last day of 2020, Congressman Jamie Raskin's beloved, brilliant, and deeply empathic son Tommy, overwhelmed by depression, took his life. Six days later, insurrectionists, summoned and incited by a president refusing to accept the outcome of a free and fair election, violently attacked the U.S. Capitol. These seismic shocks threatened to undermine every conviction Raskin held dear as a devoted family man, professor of constitutional law, and elected representative. And yet, just a week later, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked him to serve as lead impeachment manager for the second trial of a brazenly lawless president for his role in instigating the horrors of January 6, Raskin, devastated as he was, said "yes."Unthinkable is a riveting account of wrestling with grief while pursuing truth. Raskin writes candidly about his son's mental health struggles, shares the terror of January 6, ponders the decisions made by President Lincoln under siege, and exposes the white supremacist strategies built into the "deep architecture" of the Electoral College. As is obvious in his many media appearances, Raskin takes pleasure in thinking things through and finding the best way to convey complicated information. Here facts and feelings entwine as he provides a clarion, informative, and affecting account, taking readers through all the discussions, research, strategies, and practice sessions conducted in preparation for the impeachment process, which he vividly recounts in detail. Passionate, meticulous, and enthralling, Raskin's narrative sets the stage for the public hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, on which he serves, and offers crucial first-hand documentation of events that will be studied for decades to come. Raskin also reflects on his remarkable family. He traces his virtuoso gift for storytelling to his writer mother, Barbara Raskin, and his politics of conscience and integrity to his father, Marcus Raskin, a public policy expert and social critic who landed on Nixon's Enemies List. Raskin's wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin (they met in a Harvard law class taught by Laurence Tribe) served as a deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and is currently a distinguished law professor at Duke University. Their daughters, Hannah and Tabitha (who was at the Capitol on January 6 with her brother-in-law), are exceptional and inspiring, and Tommy's depthless compassion and sense of justice, which he began expressing as a very young boy, continue to guide Raskin. Intimate, invaluable, and unforgettable, Unthinkable is a work of soulful elucidation and profound humanity.

The constitutional lawyer and U.S. Representative considers the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the lawless administration that fomented them. "How did we end up here, with fascists trashing our Capitol Building and killing people?" asks Raskin, who led the House's second impeachment proceedings against the former president. His narrative has three strands. The first is personal looking out on the political, recounting the experiences of his father, one of John Kennedy's "best and brightest," who left government in opposition to the nuclear arms race. More effective, and saddening, is the second: the suicide of his son, beset by anxiety and depression, who was buried on Jan. 5. The following day brought "strategic violence by extremist elements outside the Capitol…fusing with manipulative tactics inside the Capitol to coerce Vice President Pence and Congress to overthrow the electoral votes in the states and force us into a contingent election." Raskin makes two related things eminently clear. First, he and other House leaders were prepared for the Republicans' coercive ploy, albeit surprised that Pence, "despite lots of genuflecting to the disseminators of the Big Lie," did the right thing. What they were not prepared for, he writes, was an armed mob storming the Capitol and pursuing elected officials through its corridors. For this, Raskin assigns a measure of self-blame, since Alexander Hamilton warned of just such a possibility in the first of the Federalist Papers, and the former president had recruited "thousands of the…'very fine' people he had seen marching on the fascist side of the street in 2017 in Charlottesville" to stage his insurrection. Raskin's detailed account of the second impeachment proceedings goes on at great but not burdensome length, joining Adam Schiff's Midnight in Washington as a close study in how such matters work. A brilliant preface, one might guess, to further legal actions against the disgraced former president for his crimes. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.