Damaged People - by Joe McGinniss (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The son of renowned author Joe McGinniss--celebrated for works like The Selling of the President and true crime blockbusters Fatal Vision and Cruel Doubt--delivers a raw and deeply moving memoir that explores the complicated bonds between fathers and sons, set against a backdrop of fame, addiction, and the relentless pursuit of redemption.

Joe McGinniss was a paradox: a brilliant writer whose dazzling achievements were overshadowed by personal demons. At age twenty-six, he became the youngest living person to top the New York Times bestseller list, for his book The Selling of the President about Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign. Shortly after, he walked out on his wife and their three young children.

His oldest son, Joe McGinniss Jr., went on to become a writer himself, known for his critically acclaimed novels The Delivery Man and Carousel Court. In the memoir Damaged People, McGinniss Jr. vividly recounts his affectionate yet stormy relationship with his famous father, capturing moments of tenderness and humor amid the chaos and tension.

The prosaic commitments of full-time fatherhood held little appeal for Joe McGinniss, a superstar author who proudly relished the freedom to chase stories anywhere his curiosity led. He rose to prominence with a trilogy of true crime blockbusters in the 1980s and early '90s, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt. Notoriously, he found himself the subject of Janet Malcom's The Journalist and the Murderer, a book accusing him of manipulating one of his subjects. Controversy would dog the rest of his journalistic career, as he was accused of falsifying details in his 1993 biography of Ted Kennedy and his 2011 biography of Sarah Palin. His life was a turbulent mix of success and scandal, marked by alcoholism, depression, and an obsessive dedication to his craft that often left his family struggling to stay afloat.

Now a father raising a son of his own, McGinniss Jr. wrestles with the legacy of his upbringing and his father's self-destruction, striving to create a stable and nurturing environment for his child. The pressures of modern parenting--ranging from competitive school admissions to the mental health challenges that today's youth face--force him to confront long-buried demons of ambition and obsession. Damaged People dives deep into the heartbreak of unfulfilled expectations and the beauty of second chances, offering an unflinching look at what it means to grow into a more compassionate and present parent.

Bringing a novelist's storytelling skills to this deeply personal story, McGinniss Jr. delivers a poignant tale of grace, resilience, and growth, showing us that even in the face of fractured relationships, there's hope for healing and a brighter future.

Review Quotes

"Damaged People is brave, sometimes painful, and always engrossing--about resilience, love, and hope. McGinniss is fiercely candid and a wonderful writer."
--David Sheff, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy

"A beautiful written, compassionate but unsparing chronicle of a decent man enduring, learning from and trying to overcome the pain and wounds of life with (and more often without) a famous father, whose name and profession and writing talent he shares, but whose reckless, irredeemable selfishness he refuses to inherit."
--Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses

"Moving between the 1970s and '80s, when the author was a young boy anxious for his father's attention, and the 2000s, when he's grappling with being a father to a young son, McGinniss Jr. draws comparisons between who he was becoming and who McGinniss Sr. was as a writer and father. . . . His determination to break generational patterns resonates."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Damaged People is a story about a son and his father, and another story about a father and his son; both stories full of love and recrimination. This book cries out with tenderness and nostalgia. Deeply felt and deeply moving."
--Lili Anolik, author of Didion & Babitz

"Every son is torn, perhaps, between a fear of turning out like his father and a fear of failing to live up to him. Joe McGinniss Jr.'s tender, searching, beautifully self-interrogative Damaged People threads the eye of both questions with remarkable intelligence and sensitivity. The result is book that is at once powerfully moving and utterly riveting, a lovely document of what it means to be a child, a spouse, and a parent."
--Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood

"Joe McGinniss Jr.'s Damaged People is a major work in a minor key. Beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, funny, evoking the universal in the particular story of two writers, father and son. Sr. is famous, distant, utterly self-absorbed. Jr. is honest, anxious, searching for something he fears is beyond his reach. I loved this book."
--David Maraniss, author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father

Praise for Carousel Court:

"A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time."
--O, The Oprah Magazine

"Amazing . . . Raucously inventive . . . McGinniss's gorgeous prose captures the agony of the 'moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills' as well as the rare beauty of a day when 'everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick, warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight.' But he's also a master at character, juxtaposing shallow Millennials with Phoebe and Nick, pointing out how the younger generation has 'a margin for error' that Phoebe and Nick simply can't afford at their stage in life."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter's eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she's learned 'the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle--ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.'"
--The Washington Post

"Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable--a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It's very hard to look away."
--Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Joe McGinniss Jr. is the author of Carousel Court and The Delivery Man. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.