Illinois Authors

The Open Field 2023

Once a rising star of the Republican Party, Adam Kinzinger became a traitor when he voted to impeach Donald Trump after the January 6 attacks on the Capitol. Now he shares a gripping firsthand account of the events that led to this moment, and the sacrifice required to do what is right. On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump incited a violent mob to storm the US Capitol in attempts to overturn the presidential election. It was a betrayal of our Constitution, and one of the darkest days in recent history. Yet to former congressman Adam Kinzinger it was also the culmination of a cultural and political rupture he’d long seen coming. Constructive criticism from within the Republican Party was no longer enough. It was time to stand up, even if it meant betraying his own party. In Renegade, Kinzinger tells his story of faith, service, and political duty in a democracy under siege. From the small Illinois county board where he got his start, to his years in the Air Force flying tanker missions over Iraq, to his final tumultuous term in Congress as one of the few Republican members to vote to impeach Trump and join the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Kinzinger takes readers inside the most critical moments and pivotal decisions of the last years. The result is both a searing examination of the rise of extremism and the GOP’s subsequent decent into a dysfunctional and destructive force, and a rousing call to return to unity. Raw, provocative, and clear-eyed, Renegade captures one of the most transformative periods in recent American history.