FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House

Join Rainy Day Books and American Public Square at Unity Temple to celebrate “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.” This event includes a conversation with authors Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes, and Ebony Reed, along with an exclusive APS members-only reception before the event at 6 PM. (Members can email Erinn@americanpublicsquare.org for tickets.)

The authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller “Shattered” provide a revelatory, inside look at the Biden, Harris, and Trump camps during the 2024 battle for the White House, arguably the most consequential contest in American history. The ride was so wild that it forced a sitting president to drop his re-election bid, a once and future president to survive felony convictions and a would-be assassin’s bullet, and a vice president, unexpectedly thrust into the arena, to mount an unprecedented 107-day campaign to lead the free world. Fight is the backstage story of bloodsport politics in its rawest form—the clawing, backstabbing, and rabble-rousing that drove Donald Trump into the White House and Democrats into the wilderness. At every turn, the combatants went for the jugular, whether they were facing down rivals in the other party or their own. Bestselling authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes give readers their first graphic view of the characters, their motivations, and their innermost thoughts as they battled to claim the ultimate prize and define a political era. Based on real-time interviews with more than 150 insiders—from the Trump, Harris, and Biden inner circles, as well as party leaders and operatives—Fight delivers the vivid and stunning tale of an election unlike any other.

Jonathan Allen, Author

Jonathan is an award-winning political reporter at NBC News. He previously worked as the Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg News and as the White House bureau chief for Politico. He has coauthored three prior books with his writing partner, Amie Parnes, two of which, HRC and Shattered, became New York Times bestsellers.

Amie Parnes, Author

Amie is a senior political correspondent covering national politics at The Hill. She previously worked as a staff writer at Politico, and during the first Trump administration, she was a CNN political analyst. Amie has also appeared on CBS, NBC, and ABC and is the coauthor of three books with Jonathan Allen, including the New York Times bestsellers HRC and Shattered.

Ebony Reed, Moderator

Ebony began her career as a reporter at The Plain Dealer, covering Cleveland public schools, documenting public education’s inequities. The Investigative Reporters & Editors organization recognized her examination of how social promotion impacted the district’s majority Black and brown students. At the Detroit News, she managed the local coverage during the 2008 economic crisis. Now the Chief Strategy Officer at The Marshall Project, she has held other senior roles at the Associated Press, Boston Business Journal, and the Wall Street Journal. She’s taught at more than a half dozen institutions, including The Yale School of Management.

Mará Rose Williams, Roving Reporter

Mará is the Assistant Managing Editor for Race and Equity at The Kansas City Star, where she has worked for 27 years as a reporter, columnist, and editorial writer. A native of Long Island and a graduate of the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, she previously served as the Star’s longtime education reporter, earning numerous awards for her K-12 and higher education coverage.

In 2020, she helped lead The Star’s landmark project, “The Truth in Black and White: An Apology from The Kansas City Star,” which garnered national attention and was a finalist for the Anthony Shadid Award for Ethics in Journalism. She received the 2021 Eleanor McClatchey Award for vision and leadership in journalism.

Williams also co-won the Gerald Loeb Award for her 2015 investigation into UMKC’s rankings and has taught journalism in Kenya as an Alfred Friendly Foundation Fellow. Her career includes reporting for Newsday and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is the mother of two sons and was married to the late editor and author Ceaser M. Williams.