Evan Osnos
 

 

Paperback

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Hear an audiobook sample below

Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury

By Evan Osnos

During a decade abroad, I often found myself making a case for America, urging the citizens of China, Egypt, or Iraq to trust that even though America had made grave mistakes throughout its history, it aspired to some foundational moral commitments: the rule of law, the power of truth, the right of equal opportunity. When Sarabeth and I returned in 2013, we found each of these principles under assault. I wanted to understand why. So I started going back to three places I know firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Over the next six years, I followed some ordinary individuals navigating the varied landscapes of twenty-first-century America, reaching a crescendo in a time of pandemic, political turmoil, and the pursuit of racial justice. The book is now available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “WILDLAND: The Making of America’s Fury.” Here are some places to find it -- with many thanks.

 
 

 
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Hear an audiobook sample below

Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now

By Evan Osnos

Former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and disappointments that he has suffered.

In this concise and trenchant examination, Evan Osnos, winner of the National Book Award, draws on his writings for The New Yorker to capture Biden’s lifelong quest for the American presidency. It is based on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of progressive activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members. In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy—a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.

 
[From] an immensely talented reporter for The New Yorker, Joe Biden ably takes the measure of the man and the politician, presenting a picture of the Democratic nominee that is in a few ways unexpected.
— The Washington Post
 

 
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About Age of Ambition

From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy—or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don’t see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes.

As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.

 
 

In the pages of the New Yorker, Evan Osnos has portrayed, explained and poked fun at this new China better than any other writer from the West or East. In “Age of Ambition,” Osnos takes his reporting a step further, illuminating what he calls China’s Gilded Age, its appetites, challenges and dilemmas, in a way few have done.
— The Washington Post

 

About the Author

Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering politics and foreign affairs. From 2005 to 2013, he lived in Beijing, which is the basis for his book "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Faith and Truth in the New China." It was awarded the National Book Award in 2014. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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Recent Features

Read selections from Evan's award-winning work in The New Yorker magazine.


July 9, 2023

Wes Moore Would Like to Make History

By Evan Osnos

Maryland’s first Black governor talks about his surprise win, what working in banking taught him about power, his grandmother’s advice, and the importance of service.


 
 

June 11, 2023

How Will the G.O.P. Field Respond to Donald Trump’s Indictment?

By Evan Osnos

Trump is not only the first former President to face federal charges but also the most confounding front-runner ever in a Presidential primary.


May 29, 2023

How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party

By Evan Osnos

For the very rich, even the world’s biggest performers—Beyoncé, Drake, Jennifer Lopez, Andrea Bocelli—are available, at a price.


April 25, 2023

Are We Really Getting a Rerun of the 2020 Campaign?

By Evan Osnos

President Biden’s reëlection launch aims to submerge concern about his age beneath a larger case that the character of the nation is on the ballot.


March 16, 2023

What Secrets Does the “Donald Trump of Beijing” Know?

By Evan Osnos

The case against Guo Wengui could expose more about America’s politics than China’s.


 

February 26, 2023

Sliding Toward a New Cold War

By Evan Osnos

Not since the Berlin Wall fell has the world been cleaved so deeply by the kind of conflict that John F. Kennedy called a “long, twilight struggle.”


February 14, 2023

Ron Klain Looks Back on Biden’s First Two Years as President

By Evan Osnos

“We have been declared dead, dead, dead many times,” the White House’s departing chief of staff says, of the Administration. “You just have to keep after it.”


February 1, 2023

What Ron Klain Learned in the White House

By Evan Osnos

Joe Biden’s exiting chief of staff is a case study in the slow accumulation of expertise.


January 16, 2023

The Getty Family’s Trust Issues

By Evan Osnos

Heirs to an iconic fortune sought out a wealth manager who would assuage their progressive consciences. Now their dispute is exposing dynastic secrets.


November 28, 2022

Chinese Protesters Warily Tell Xi Jinping, “Don’t Push Me”

By Evan Osnos

The nation’s most defiant public demonstrations in years oppose “zero COVID” policies, but their roots run deeper.


November 14, 2022

Did Joe Biden and Xi Jinping Lower the Risk of War Over Taiwan?

By Evan Osnos

The first meeting between the two heads of state ended with no concessions on either side, but it represented a positive step at a precarious moment in U.S.-China relations.


 


October 23, 2022

Xi Jinping’s Historic Bid at the Communist Party Congress

By Evan Osnos

In his efforts to escape the “cycles of order and disorder, rise and fall” that China’s emperors could not, is Xi himself slipping into them?


 

October 17, 2022

How a Tycoon Linked to Chinese Intelligence Became a Darling of Trump Republicans

By Evan Osnos

Guo Wengui has been trailed by scandals involving corruption and espionage. What is he really after?


August 1, 2022

What Really Drives Members of Congress to Do the Unthinkable?

By Evan Osnos

Four decades after Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, came to Washington, he is retiring—and he has a warning to colleagues about the price of power.


July 21, 2022

If This Isn’t a Climate Emergency, What Is?

By Evan Osnos

President Biden, at a climate event, stopped short of declaring an emergency, casting the day mostly as a reminder of all that has not been done.


July 18, 2022

The Haves and the Have-Yachts

By Evan Osnos

Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny. The ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers.


June 22, 2022

What It Means to Be Targeted by the President

By Evan Osnos

Witnesses at the latest January 6th hearings share an experience that, since Donald Trump, has become a hallmark of politics: being terrorized by the full modern machinery of American hate-mongering.


April 25, 2022

After a COVID Expert Struggled to Obtain New Treatments for His Parents, He Tweeted a Road Map

By Evan Osnos

Older, disabled, and chronically ill Americans who could benefit from novel therapeutics are scrambling to find them easily.


March 24, 2022

How to Flood Putin’s “Information Desert”

By Evan Osnos

As Russia’s independent media fades to black, there is new demand in the country for U.S.-backed media and technology that has roots in the Cold War.


March 7, 2022

Turning the Focus on America’s Oligarchs

By Evan Osnos

Could the scrutiny of Putin’s favored billionaires hastened by the war in Ukraine extend to the hidden money that subverts democracy in the United States?


February 24, 2022

What Is China Learning from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?

By Evan Osnos

Xi Jinping’s unusually close bond with Vladimir Putin puts China in risky company.


February 11, 2022

What the “Involution” Olympics in Beijing Suggest About China’s Future

By Evan Osnos

The Winter Games are constrained not only by the pandemic but also by the Communist Party’s determination to suppress any challenge that could test its grip.


January 30, 2022

How Beijing Is Playing the Olympics

By Evan Osnos

China has long been fascinated with Olympic glory, but the run-up to the Winter Games has been beset by extraordinary pressures from the realms of politics, diplomacy, and public health.


 
 

January 20, 2022

Why President Biden Bet on a Senate That No Longer Exists

By Evan Osnos

On the eve of the President’s first anniversary in office, members of the chamber he served for so long voted for paralysis over action.


 
 

December 27, 2021

Dan Bongino and the Big Business of Returning Trump to Power

By Evan Osnos

The Secret Service agent turned radio host is furious at liberals—so he’s trying to build a right-wing media infrastructure in time for 2024.


 
 

December 20, 2021

West Virginians Ask Joe Manchin: Which Side Are You On?

By Evan Osnos

The senator’s blockade against programs that have helped his constituents escape poverty makes some question “who matters to Joe.”


 
 

November 19, 2021

Can a Vastly Bigger National-Service Program Bring the Country Back Together?

By Evan Osnos

The idea has a remarkably broad array of supporters, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Stanley McChrystal.


 
 

November 10, 2021

Does Xi Jinping’s Seizure of History Threaten His Future?

By Evan Osnos

The struggles of the first century of Communist Party rule are being buried by the need to cohere around what Xi calls “the great rejuvenation” of China.


 
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August 30, 2021

Life After White-Collar Crime

By Evan Osnos

Every week, fallen executives come together, seeking sympathy and a second act.


 
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July 1, 2021

After a Hundred Years, What Has China’s Communist Party Learned?

By Evan Osnos

Beijing reverts to a belief that paranoia and suspicion are the best policies.


 
 

June 28, 2021

The Man Who Controls the Senate

By Evan Osnos

Will Joe Manchin’s search for common ground wreck the Democrats’ agenda?


 
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April 26, 2021

Biden Inherits F.D.R.’s Supreme Court Problem

By Evan Osnos

Roosevelt tried to pack the Court to protect his ambitious agenda from conservatives. Biden, facing a similar threat, has appointed a commission to study options.


 
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January 20, 2021

“A Broken Land”: Biden and the True Costs of Unity

By Evan Osnos

In launching his Presidency around the pursuit of unity, Biden will immediately face the hard political calculations of making it concrete.


 
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January 6, 2021

Mob Rule in the Capitol

By Evan Osnos

Five years after the Trump era began, a physical assault on America’s basic symbols of democracy feels both shocking and inevitable.


 
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November 16, 2020

The Violent Style

By Evan Osnos

After a bitterly contested election, the country teeters between persuasion and force. After four years of Trump, the country faces a haunting question: Can we argue our way back from the abyss?


 
 

August 31, 2020

Can Biden’s Center Hold?

By Evan Osnos

After a career built on incremental progress, Joe Biden is promising a Presidency of transformational change. The election will test whether his campaign can bring together a divided Party and a beleaguered country.


 
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May 11, 2020

How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump

By Evan Osnos

To understand the President’s path to the 2020 election, look at what he has provided the country’s executive class.


 
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May 10, 2020

The Folly of Trump’s Blame-Beijing Coronavirus Strategy

By Evan Osnos

The relationship between the U.S. and China was already fragile; now the two countries are turning against each other in perilous ways.


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February 10, 2020

Qassem Suleimani And How Nations Decide to Kill

By Adam Entous and Evan Osnos

A new frontier in the use of assassination.


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January 6, 2020

The Future Of America’s Contest With China

By Evan Osnos

Washington is in an intensifying standoff with Beijing. Which one will fundamentally shape the twenty-first century?


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September 17, 2018

Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?

By Evan Osnos

The most famous entrepreneur of his generation is facing a public reckoning with the power of Big Tech.


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June 18, 2018 Issue

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s Nuclear Summit and the Bid for History

By Evan Osnos

In Kim’s attempt to unleash the economy and hold on to his dictatorship, he seems to be taking a lesson from China’s Communist Party: change, or die.


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May 21, 2018

Trump vs. the “Deep State”

By Evan Osnos

How the Administration’s loyalists are quietly reshaping American governance.


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February 26, 2018

A New Game at the Winter Olympics

By Evan Osnos

Kim Jong Un tries to play South Korea against the United States.


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January 29, 2018

Jared Kushner Is China's Trump Card

By Adam Entous and Evan Osnos

How the President's  son-in-law, despite his inexperience in diplomacy, became Beijing's point of interest


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January 8, 2018

Making China Great Again

By Evan Osnos

As Donald Trump surrenders America's global commitments, Xi Jinping is learning to pick up the pieces.


 
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Sept 14, 2017

A Reporter's Takeaway From a Trip To North Korea

By Evan Osnos

Evan Osnos answers questions from readers on his recent article about his time in Pyongyang.


 
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Sept 7, 2017

The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea

By Evan Osnos

Three days after President Trump threatens "fire and fury", Evan Osnos arrives in North Korea to investigate the threat of nuclear war, and what the North Koreans really think.


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May 1, 2017

How Trump Could Get Fired

By Evan Osnos

The Constitution offers two paths for removing a President from office. How feasible are they?


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February 24, 2017

Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War

By Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa

What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and what lies ahead?


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January 23, 2017

Doomsday Prep for the Super Rich

By Evan Osnos

Some of the wealthiest people in America-  in Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond- are getting ready for the crackup of civilization. 


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December 19, 2016

When Tyranny Takes Hold

By Evan Osnos

Xu Hongci's story can be read as a testament to a man's unwillingness to succumb, or as the description of a moment when "the naked truth, so long outraged, burst upon the eyes of the world," as Albert Camus wrote of Hungary's uprising. But, above all, it should be read as a warning.


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April 6, 2015

Born Red

By Evan Osnos

Before Xi Jinping took power, he was described, in China and abroad, as an unremarkable provincial administrator. But, a quarter of the way through his ten-year term, he has emerged as the nation's most authoritarian leader since Chairman Mao.


 

Recent Work from The New Yorker

A White House Tour, from Outside Trump’s Fence

“An Abuse of Sacred Symbols”: Trump, a Bible, and a Sanctuary

The “Inequality of Pain”: West Virginia’s Gubernatorial Race Confronts the Coronavirus

Why Democracy Is on the Decline in the United States

The Coronavirus and How Political Spin Has Worsened Epidemics

China’s “Iron House”: Struggling Over Silence in the Coronavirus Epidemic

China Forces the N.B.A. to Weigh Value Against Values

Michael Bloomberg’s Answer to the U.N. General Assembly

China’s Hong Kong Dilemma

Will Joe Biden’s History Lift Him Up or Weigh Him Down?

Cracking the Code: A Toddler, an iPad, and a Tweet

How to Talk About the New Zealand Massacre: More Sunlight, Less Oxygen

Trump, Kim, Cohen, and the Limits of the President’s Power

The Investor Seth Klarman, in a Rare Interview, Offers a Warning. Davos Should Listen

How Much Trust Can Facebook Afford to Lose?

Facebook and the Age of Manipulation

Could Military Veterans Change More Than Control of Congress?

How Serious Is the New Facebook Breach?

Why Is the Trump Campaign Attacking Senator Kirsten Gillibrand?

The Biggest Winner at the U.S.-North Korea Summit: China

North Korea’s Second Thoughts on the Summit with Donald Trump

Why North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Went to China

Three Key Questions About Donald Trump’s Summit with Kim Jong Un

Xi Jinping May Be President for Life. What Will Happen to China?

CNN’s Town Hall on Guns and the Unmaking of Marco Rubio

Reading the Mueller Indictment: A Russian-American Fraud

Donald Trump and North Korea: Big Button, Small President

Why the 2018 Midterms Are So Vulnerable to Hackers

The “Bitter Pill” in North Korea’s Most Powerful Missile

Is the Political Class Drifting Toward War with North Korea?

Trump’s Irrational Hatred of the Iran Deal

No Laughing Matter: Why Trump’s Words on North Korea Matter

Why China Won’t Pressure North Korea as Much as Trump Wants

Your Questions About “The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea,” Answered

A Reporter’s Takeaways from a Trip to North Korea

Donald Trump's State of Mind, And Ours

The Unbroken Liu Xiaobo

How Xi and Trump Can Make Real Progress on North Korea

The Diplomat Who Defied the Administration

Comey’s Revenge: Measuring Obstruction

Jared Kushner’s Russia Problems

The World View of James Mattis

May Days

A Turning Point for Trump