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 ... All the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core. A former military prosecutor, DeSantis is undeniably diligent and disciplined ... Even the title, with its awkward feint at boldness while clinging to the safety of cliché, suggests the anxiety of an ambitious politician who really, really wants to run for president in 2024 and knows he needs the grievance vote ... For the most part, The Courage to Be Free is courageously free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernible sense of humor. While his first book was weird and esoteric enough to have obviously been written by a human, this one reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by ChatGPT ... At around 250 pages, this isn’t a particularly long book, but it’s padded with such banalities ... Take out the gauzy abstraction, the heartwarming clichés, and much of what DeSantis is describing in The Courage to Be Free is chilling — unfree and scary.
A memoir-cum-288-page-exercise in sycophancy and ambition tethered to a whole lot of owning the libs ... A mirthless read ... On the page, not surprisingly, DeSantis does not examine the January 6 attack.
It is now a truth universally acknowledged that The Courage to Be Free... is boring ... What passion exists in the bland gruel of The Courage to Be Free comes in the form of resentment toward this 'elite' ... In fact, despite his station on the opposing side of the culture wars, DeSantis bears a pronounced resemblance to the authoritarian caricature he offers of the left. He is patronizing and high-handed. He produces wonky, stuffy sentences ... One thing this dishwater-dull book makes clear: DeSantis is no entertainer.
