New York Times review pans new Ron DeSantis book

A New York Times book review of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) new memoir is highly critical of the state’s top executive.

DeSantis’s book, “The Courage to Be Free,” which will be released Tuesday, and the ensuing media tour that has come with it, are widely seen as a precursor to a potential announcement from the governor that he will seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

As of Monday morning, it was the top-selling book on Amazon.

In a review published Monday, Times book critic Jennifer Szalai writes, “the overall sense you get from reading his new memoir is that of the mechanical try-hard — someone who has expended a lot of effort studying which way the wind is blowing in the Republican Party and is learning how to comport himself accordingly.”

In the book, DeSantis pans “wokeness” and “legacy media,” the Times noted, which dismissed his rhetoric saying, “all the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core.”

“His new book will leave some supporters, who have encouraged DeSantis to ‘humanize himself’ for a national audience, sorely disappointed,” the Times wrote. “The bullying sense of superiority is unmistakable, even when he tries to gussy it up in a mantle of freedom. DeSantis is not taking any chances: He may have been able to ‘withstand’ the ‘indoctrination’ of being exposed to ideas he didn’t like, but he doesn’t seem to believe the same could be said for anyone else.”

DeSantis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Times’s book review.