John A. Jenkins Author Event

The president and his FBI have a secret agenda for revenge against political enemies. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators mass at the Capitol, many bent on violence. More than thirteen thousand people are rounded up and detained without charges by a police state run amok—the largest mass arrest in America’s history. Press freedom is under attack. America is mired in an unwinnable war, half a world away. Threats from China and Russia loom. A Black activist on the run becomes a symbol of resilience and resistance for a movement. The Supreme Court takes up Roe v. Wade. The press accuses the administration of war crimes.

And a giant cache of secret papers is about to bring down the president…

The events that led up to the Watergate break-in are mirrored in what is happening today, as summarized in the forthcoming book SUMMER OF ’71: Five Months That Changed America (on sale June 30, 2026). In the vein of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929, and Heather Ann Thompson’s Fear and Fury, this is a snapshot going back to a pivotal season in contemporary US history – just before Watergate - that would change the country’s direction permanently. If history is rhyming, this takes readers right to the first stanza - a country in crisis, and a president on the precipice.

Gripping, resonant, and page-turning, this is practically a photo negative of events unfolding now.

Read the full book and press materials here: 

Award-winning author and investigative journalist John A. Jenkins – whose biography of William Rehnquist is a “meticulously researched account” (New York Times Book Review) – was a first-hand witness to the events of 1971 as a Washington, DC reporter. With a keen understanding of the value of primary sources, he uses newly available documents and oral histories to recreate, day by day, the chaos of the time, and the last clear chance that politicians and policy makers had to set America on a different course.

Jenkins has a specialty in partisans and power, and has penned features for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and The Washington Monthly, among others. A four-time recipient of the American Bar Association's Gavel Award Certificate of Merit, one of the highest awards in legal journalism, he is the founder of Law Street Media, the most widely visited and highly engaged law-and-policy site on the web. Prior to starting Law Street, Jenkins served for 15 years as President & Publisher of CQ Press, the leading political science textbook and reference publishers. Currently, he co-leads the predictive-AI start-up PoliScio Analytics, which he co-founded in 2022, and he sits on the board of OpenSecrets.org, a research nonprofit which tracks the connections between private money and public power.