Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn

by Nicholas von Hoffman

A biography of Roy M. Cohn, Senator Joe McCarthy's special assistant on the House on American Activities Committee. He was also friend of famous people such as J. Edgar Hoover & Ronald Reagan, scourge of liberals & socialists, tax-dodger extraordinaire, homosexual & ultimately AIDs victim.
Acknowledgments
I Can Fix Anything, but...
Mama's Boy
Come Cohn or Come Schine
If You're Indicted, You're Invited
A Late Hit...
Source Notes
Index
About the Author

Genres: Biography, History, Politics, Nonfiction, LGBT, American History, 20th Century

496 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1988

About the author

Nicholas von Hoffman was an American journalist and author. He first worked as a community organizer for Saul D. Alinsky in Chicago for ten years from 1953 to 1963. Later, Von Hoffman wrote for The Washington Post, and most notably, was a commentator on the CBS Point-Counterpoint segment for 60 Minutes, from which Don Hewitt fired him in 1974. von Hoffman was also a columnist for The Huffington Post.

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Say what you like about Roy Cohn (d. 1986), he was an amazing and at times mesmerizing celebrity, as adept at getting media attention for himself and his law clients as he was avoiding the shadows of his personal life. This is not to say Roy Cohn was an admirable figure, though he had his supporters. Cohn, the scion of a Democratic state judge from the Bronx, was a lifelong Democrat but developed a passion for sniffing out "pinkos" in his own party. His sexual life was predominantly homosexual (I would not call him 'gay' in the modern sense), who cruised for pickups and studs at Atlantic coast resorts and in Manhattan's cavernous Studio 54 nightclub, who nonetheless had made life hell for "Lavender" civil servants in the Fifties.

To read Nicholas von Hoffman's well researched and written 1988 biography is to come away with two interlocking conclusions; "How did they let him get AWAY with that?" and "What a hypocrite!" A prodigy, Cohn graduated from college and law school early and bootstrapped himself into a position on Sen. Joseph McCarthy's red-baiting staff in the early Fifties. Cohn then toured Western Europe at governmental expense with his good-looking buddy David Schine, all the while looking for leftist books in the State Department libraries, trying to get those libraries to stock Schine's poorly-written "book" (an eight-page pamphlet, really) called "Definitions of Communism." A notoriously poorly prepared advocate in New York's courts of law, Cohn seems to have succeeded primarily on aggression, chutzpah (sheer gall), and a great deal of it's-not-what-you-know-it's-who-you-know. Von Hoffman says time and again that trenchant legal analysis was not Cohn's method, trading favors was. And von Hoffman was right.

Later, as he was dying of AIDS most likely caught sexually, Cohn pulled strings to jump the queue on a government drug study to get early versions of AZT for himself, in the process denying it to some equally sick, younger men who had waited patiently for its release under FDA rules. (The story of this, allowing for a little dramatic license, is told more thoroughly in Tony Kushner's 1993 play cycle, ANGELS IN AMERICA.) While von Hoffman's book does hop around a bit from witness to witness, its research is excellent and the book is often surprisingly fun to read. For instance, he could have merely said that David Schine's underdeveloped and poorly documented eight-page pamphlet was looked on by experts, and emerged wanting. Instead, he wrote "[T]his pamphlet, when it was read by older, less rustic men and women, became the occasion for hoots, gibes, hollers, and endless ridicule [p. 142, hardbound version]." Such telling -- yet entertaining -- results must have caused the author enormous amounts of hard and fast work, as the hardbound copy of this book appeared in print less than two years after Cohn's death.

Perhaps the best reason to invest the time in CITIZEN COHN is that Cohn was part of a cycle of history: just as he learned tricks and tactics from Senator McCarthy and his right-wing sympathizers, he passed on those strategems to a young real-estate tycoon named Donald Trump in the Seventies and Eighties. Therefore, reading CITIZEN COHN offers not only a key document in 20th Century American political history, but advances a warning for our own times in ways even the erudite von Hoffman could only anticipate at the time, but not yet fully appreciate. The book contains a generous (and significant) assortment of photos.

Updated December 3, 2020.

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roy Cohn (1927-1986) was someone I had known about for many years for the notoriety he achieved as the young lawyer who served as the chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the early 1950s at the height of the anti-Communist hysteria in the U.S. A hysteria upon which McCarthy rode to fame (infamy), destroying the lives and careers of many innocent people in the process. McCarthy went on to overreach himself through the Army/McCarthy hearings in the spring of 1954 and was discredited. Consequently, McCarthy was censured by his Senate colleagues, took increasingly to drink, and died an alcoholic in 1957. I was not disposed to like Roy Cohn.

Yet recently Cohn came increasingly to mind because of his later association as a mentor to the present occupant of the Oval Office when he was an up-and-coming real estate mogul in New York during the 1970s and 1980s. I searched around for a biography that would give me a more comprehensive understanding of who this man was and how and why he was able to exert the influence he had. Well, "CITIZEN COHN" fit the bill. The author interviewed scores of Cohn's associates, family members & relatives, acquaintances, as well as those people he cheated in various court cases in which he agreed to represent them. This was a book whose contents I had to slowly ingest as it took me from Roy Cohn's final days as he was dying from AIDS to his early life growing up in the Bronx, his rise as a young attorney in New York and then Washington (where he sustained a temporary setback following McCarthy's fall into disgrace in 1954), and his subsequent development into crafty lawyer, power broker, schmoozer with the rich & powerful in the law and government, and socialite.

It seems that there was nothing Roy Cohn wasn’t willing to do to help a client win a lawsuit or court case. His friendship with J. Edgar Hoover he used to help destroy people’s careers. And yet to those people he helped and befriended, Cohn was highly regarded. I have the impression that Cohn enjoyed the drama of the life he led and used money as a vehicle to advance what he believed in. He was not someone who was so much interested in amassing money and wealth as in exercising power and influence to shape events and wreck vengeance on his enemies (e.g. Robert Kennedy and Robert Morgenthau, a former Federal attorney for the Southern District of New York and later District Attorney for New York County) or anyone he deemed a threat to the interests he defended. Indeed, as was pointed out in the book, "[Cohn] was not driven to corruption for money. Roy joined the bar when the law business was exploding, when lawyers were beginning to amass fortunes comparable to industrialists and financiers; the way was open for him to make his millions honestly, ethically, legally as of course, he often did.

"But his crimes yielded Roy more than profit; they were the zesty acts from which he seemed to get the maximum zing by giving a few friends, a few lovers, a peek; they were a defiance, a taunt to the men and women who stood for rules, conventions, maxims which tortured, twisted, and confused him. There were elements of anger and disorder and bewilderment in Roy's crimes."

Now that I know much more about Roy Cohn than I did before reading "CITIZEN COHN", my opinion of him is unchanged. He proved to be as awful as I had previously believed him to be, based on what I had heard about him on TV from people who had dealings with him. Yet, I have been made aware of how complex a person Cohn was, both in his professional and personal lives. He was brilliant in many ways and had a capacity for kindness and generosity to people whose relationships he valued, and who in turn became his friends. But what talents he had, he avidly used for manipulating the justice system in protecting his clients (some of whom were prominent leaders in the New York mafia) and cheating honest people who sought his counsel. I don't think Hollywood could have crafted a better story than the life of Roy Cohn.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roy Marcus Cohn (2/20/27–8/2/86) was an East Coast attorney who became world-famous as an assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red hunts of the fifties and powerful as a fixer, schemer and middleman thereafter. The story of his life is one of Establishment criminality, double-standards, deceit, exploitation, corruption and debauchery.

This book is strongest as a biography in its first chapters detailing Cohn's early life, particularly as regards his associations with his mother and with Joe McCarthy. Beyond that the narrative trails off into vaguely thematized series of anecdotes from friends and associates of the subject. Much is made of the fact that Cohn, ostensibly an anti-gay Conservative, was an outrageously active homosexual throughout his adult life, unashamed to pay for his required nightly partners and apparently active even after he had contracted AIDS. Of course, characteristically, he denied both his sexual proclivities and his disease. It need hardly be noted that he also engaged in sex with minors, used illicit drugs, evaded taxes, stiffed clients, planted false news stories, practiced extortion and engaged in illegal wiretapping.

Often the legal representative of Mob figures, Cohn consorted with the rich, powerful and famous, Democrats and Republicans--though favoring the most politically conservative of them. His heyday was, as one might imagine, during the Reagan Administration, when gays were publicly denounced but privately accepted by the Hollywood White House and when the very wealthy knew they had friends in the Justice Department. He was, according to his friends, quite connected and quite fun.

Contrary to some students of this criminal, von Hoffman maintains that Cohn's anti-communism was sincere, that he sent American Communists to jail and to the chair with good conscience. Given the ethical qualities of their prosecutors, this can only be read as a strong endorsement of the CPUSA.

[chance.]

i can't, in good faith, give this book any star rating as it just sits at an odd place as a result of its construction. cohn is a figure of great interest to me and, so far as i can tell, this is the most prominent, complete, and accurate detailing of his life available. while it may be relatively exhaustive, it is also unfocused and unengaging, providing too much detail on the mundane and too little on the absurd. von hoffman has no clear goal and perspective in mind, leading to pages and pages of quotes that have either been chopped up and frankensteined together, or left so untouched that they make little sense. furthermore, the book does little in the way of context and makes for a nightmare of a read for anyone that doesnt already know the cliffsnotes version of both the second half of the 20th century in america or cohn's life, and making cohn's historical presence seem far more isolated than it was. honestly, it's a mess, unless you're like me and just want to dive headfirst into all the disturbing, slimy, and poorly recorded details of cohn's life, skip it. this is not an introduction to cohn nor a worthwhile supplement.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muckraking biography of Roy Cohn, the notorious Red-hunter turned New York power broker whose life casts a troubling shadow over postwar America. Von Hoffman, an investigative journalist, has little nice to say about Cohn, which is understandable based on the evidence offered. Son of a Jewish judge and an overbearing mother, he entered law and soon emerged as a ruthlessly ambitious prosecutor. Thus he gained fame helping to prosecute Cold War spies William Remington and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, earning public notoriety in his mid-20s. Which catapulted him to even more notoriety as Joseph McCarthy's right-hand man, both fueling his investigations and causing his mentor's downfall (through his reckless friendship with David Schine). Cohn emerged unscathed, becoming a high-powered lawyer and kingmaker in New York City, a celebrity who more often inspired scorn than admiration, fear rather than respect...but who always managed to come out on top. Von Hoffman recounts with relish Cohn's dirty dealings with judges and politicians, mobsters and corporate clients, spiced with occasional acts of goodwill and generosity towards friends and clients, and brutally exposes his subject as a self-hating Jew and closeted gay man who never admitted his sexuality. The latter, in particular, becomes a major strand in the book's narrative: Cohn carried on a covert sex life even as he and McCarthy purged "pansies" from the government in the '50s, as he fronted and funded homophobic conservative groups in the '70s and '80s, even as AIDS sent him to an early grave. The self-hatred makes him a compelling dramatic subject, but the utter brutality of it - his overcompensating for internalized homophobia by smashing anyone less terrified than he - makes it difficult to sympathize. Hated and hypocritical as he was, he remained powerful until just before his death, with a bare-knuckle, take-no-prisoners style that made him hard to defeat. That Cohn managed to get away with so much for so long provides a deeply troubling indictment of New York society (only towards the end of his life was he disbarred and made a pariah); that his protege currently sits in the White House, lacking any of Cohn's charm, intellect or shrewdness while possessing all of his nastiest, most repellent traits, is even more disturbing.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roy Cohn was a homosexual Jew who viciously persecuted homosexuals and Jews, along with communists, suspected communists, artists, writers, intellectuals and actors as a chief aid to Senator Joseph McCarthy. I had forgotten I ever even read this book until the Senator Craig scandal broke. I read the book after seeing the movie (with James Woods as Cohn) and was equally enthralled and horrified. Cohn died of AIDS, and his ending would almost be poetic were it not so horrible. As an assistant to McCarthy, Cohn ruined the lives of countless people as part of McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunts. His methodical cruelty was matched only by his striking hypocrisy, as he went about extorting and outing and ruining the careers of homosexual government employees all the while using his position to get jobs for his lover and living the life of a deeply homosexual man. He accused many of scamming the government, meanwhile he scammed his coworkers and his friends of immeasurable money, time and energy. Citizen Cohn is a wonderful read about a chapter in American history that many people of all political persuasions would like to forget. We shouldn't forget, lest we do it again; assuming we're not already doing it.

NC

[Nannie Bittinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half way through this book I started just skimming....checked index for names that interested me and read those few pages. Many instances described could have been written about our current events...only the names have changed and sometimes even the names are the same. The back cover of this book, written in 1988, calls Cohn "...the most unrepentant opportunist of our time." Thirty years later, we have found a NEW unrepentant opportunist and worse yet, allowed him to become president. How sad and frightening.

[Gregg Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wonder what it would be like to live a life of pure unadulterated selfishness? Look no further than the life of Roy Cohn in this excellent biography. Cohn's "doting mother created a person who was totally free of the rules that you and I or most people go by....Roy played by his own set of rules. Whatever he wanted at any given moment was the right thing."

Cohn, after a privileged childhood (his uncle owned the Lionel train company) and education became a lawyer at twenty. And although lacking organizational and brief-writing skills he was "a focused man locked on to his objectives, able to coordinate and lead large enterprises through undeviating concentration."

He was friends with or represented the likes of Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Walters and a large assortment of media types and mobsters. His fever-pitch intensity and scorched earth policy left the other side in a legal battle intimidated by his very presence. If you wanted to win your case, you hired a high-powered Ivy-league lawyer. If you wanted do destroy your opponent, you hired Roy Cohn.

And yet, Cohn's upbringing (an entire part of the four part book is called "Mama's Boy."), inferiority complex, depression and demons drove him to endless excess, financially and sexually. He wrote: "There it was again--that drive for the big time, the only thing that could cure my inferiority complex and lift me out of what was still left of my depression, which by this point I could define as directly related to my ability to rise above the crowd."

And rise he did, hobnobbing with the elite of the elite, but he had no core within himself. He was only his latest legal or sexual conquest. And those conquests he fed upon. The bloodier the conquest, the better. "Ordinarily when he (Roy) was attacked in the media it was not for being ineffective but for being evil, and that was the kind of publicity on which Roy thrived. Newsweek magazine quoted a lawyer as saying, "Every time someone says he's ruthless, the practice just gets bigger."

Whereas most people seek a nice even keel to their lives, Roy sought to reside only in the rarefied atmosphere of the highest highs. He stomped on others. He lied, cheated and stole. He lived the life he wanted. And what a life it was.

[Nick Palczewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an informative biography of one of the most influential people in 20th century politics. There are plenty of primary sources and first hand interviews from people who knew Roy Cohn well. However, this book was longer than it should have been. The author seemed to keep repeating the same points over and over again, particularly regarding Mr. Cohn's financial troubles, his alleged dealing with corruption, and his closeted homosexual behavior.

[Emg · Rating 1 out of 5]

In sorry need of a stern editor! Sloppy use of pronouns, insistence on including verbatim interviews instead of summarizing so that they make sense to a reader, disjointed, too much background in some cases, none at all in others. Seemed to be thrown together from tapes with minimal research that would give it a more solid, thoughtful feel.

[Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

TMI: too much information. Very interesting and somewhat timely but there's more here than anybody could possibly want to know. Von Hoffman interviewed lots of people and seems to have included everything they said verbatim. Serious editing and some summarizing, especially what multiple interviewees tell us, would make this a better read. The first part of the book gives us more than we could possibly want to know about Cohn's childhood. The best part (3 stars) is about Cohn and the rise and fall of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and of course the rise and fall of Cohn himself. Donald Trump clearly took some lessons from McCarthy--or Cohn, who he associated with (I'm not sure either of these guys really had friends) in New York. The latter part of the book with Cohn continuing to be closeted even when he eventually fell ill and died of AIDS is most in need of a good edit. Too many people who knew him or knew him marginally describe his behavior and try, unsuccessfully, to explain him. Neither they nor the author succeed in explaining his strange attraction and the power he had over people. Some of that attraction and power is explained by the wide circle of influential acquaintances, some of whom may have actually been friends. But why did these people want to be associated with him? His politics aside, he was neither nice or good or even attractive. Or really rich. He was just connected. But why did any one want to be connected to him?

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roy Cohn is the villain of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America so I spent a few days reading through von Hoffman’s definitive—though uneven and incomplete—biography. Cohn became famous in the 50s as a young prosecutor who pushed for the execution of the Rosenbergs and then as one of Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunters. Cohn’s arrogance and overreach—they tried to red-bait the Army and defense establishments—contributed to bringing McCarthy down. The closeted Cohn’s second life as a high-flying lawyer in NYC takes up most of the book. Like a demonic Zelig he is present at crucial moments to spread rumors, make fortunes (Trump), destroy careers and candidates (Ferraro) that all added up to the rise of Reagan and the spread of AIDS—which Cohn famously died from (“liver cancer”). If he is the “polestar of human evil” (Kushner) it is because of his vicious life lived, willfully, in the pursuit of power, greed and pleasure without heeding law, rules or morality. He truly had no decency.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

In researching my role in Angels in America, this biography has been invaluable. The playwright Tony Kushner had obviously read this for research also, as so much of von Hoffman's material ends up being planted in the dialogue. Roy was a fascinating bully, genius on-his-feet thinker. He could be a great friend and POWERFUL enemy. He could charm and he could intimidate in the span of a few seconds. I'm lucky to get a chance to experience this onstage, but if you want to read about a man that taught Donald Trump everything he knows, read this very detailed account of his life.

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭

[Donald Trump (Parody) · Rating 1 out of 5]

hey all these rumors about Uncle Roy goin' the greek way really offend me. he was a terrific lawyer and top of the line ladies man. he got more trim than a dress factory! and THATS the truth!

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The only good thing I've heard about the late Senator Joe McCarthy is that he was a practicing homosexual".---Gore Vidal
"I'm sure that the merits an honor badge in your book".---Roy Cohn
"I'll get to you in a minute".---Gore

Was Roy Cohn, closeted gay man and self-hating Jew, one of the most vile creatures to ever walk on American soil? That's the portrait we get in ANGELS IN AMERICA, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tony Kushner, an openly gay man and Jew who thinks Cohn, who loved persecuting Jews and gays, incarnated evil. Long before ANGELS, however, we had this magnificent biography by Nicholas von Hoffman. Cohn needed no fictional embellishment to have horns put on him. His sordid life was on display for all who paid attention. Roy started out as junior prosecutor in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg atomic spy case, demanding the death penalty for the couple. (The magistrate, Judge Kaufman, was Jewish too. We wouldn't want the world to think the federal government was prosecuting Jews, would we?) After that triumph Roy wormed his way into the senior staff of Senator Joseph McCarthy, hunting down non-existent Communist infiltrators and forcing U.S. government libraries overseas to remove subversive books such as HUCKLEBERRY FLYNN and the complete works of John Steinbeck. (A junior member of the staff was Robert F. Kennedy, a fact RFK lovers want you to forget.) von Hoffman makes it clear that David Shine, the other Senior staff member, for whom Cohn tried to secure special favors when he was drafted into the Army, was the love of Roy's life. Ironically, or by way of Nemesis, this touched off the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, which destroyed the Senator from Wisconsin on live television: "Have you no shame, Sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?" For another man this would have spelt doom but not Roy Cohn, who parlayed failure into success by re-inventing himself as "the toughest lawyer in America", thus disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that "there are no second acts in American life". Wasn't his homosexuality a problem in public life? Not for Roy, who as a lawyer knew perfectly well the art of evasiveness: "Do I look like a homosexual? Do you see me swishing and prancing?" and on why his private yacht was always filled with young beautiful men: "It just so happens I like young people around me". Cohn was willing to take on any client, from tax-dodgers to mafiosi, provided they were evil and he was highly-recompensed for both legal absolution and cleaning up their public image. Even when AIDS caught up with Roy he simply lied about his private life: "If the National Institute of Health says I'm HIV positive that's a mistake. I'll have that removed tomorrow".
The title CITIZEN COHN is well-chosen. Roy was not an aberration. He was one of us. Incidentally, you may have heard of one of his high-profile clients from the go-go Eighties: Donald Trump.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though far from laudatory of course, Citizen Cohn strikes me as the type of book that Cohn would have had prepared about himself, in form if not content. Overlong points of gossip encumber the narrative and prevent any broader import either political or social.

Von Hoffman is thorough up through the well-documented and televised events leading to Cohn’s resignation as Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel, but for the murkier second half of his life, the object of interest in my reading in particular, he was accordingly murky himself. Perhaps an author 30 years ago is more intrigued by the indifference a politically reactionary gay man felt about the contradictions in his own life, but far too much attention was paid to Cohn’s personal psychology and intimate relationships. I could even see the import of more information from Cohn’s rentboys and lovers as I’m sure their particular vantage point of his life was a relatively interesting one, but I fail to see who would care about whether or not he was really shtupping Barbara Walters.

Part of von Hoffman’s issue is his sourcing. In an effort to not have his book accused of being a complete hitjob, the lion’s share of von Hoffman’s interview sources are from Cohn’s social circles and thus cut from exactly the superficial and narcissistic cloth that he was cut from himself, such that in offhanded remarks about Cohn’s relations with foreign dignitaries, one cannot expect and does not receive any recollection of what country they represented.

Cohn was a pathetic figure, who made his way by ingratiating himself to the venal themselves. A proper biography would chronicle not just the man but his times. This book fails to do so.

[Neal Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

For 30 years, Cohn was a legal fixer and bully for the most obnoxious and corrupt of the USA's power elite, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Trump in the 1980s. He was finally disbarred for pressuring a client to amend his will on his deathbed.

Cohn was a hedonist, and a regular at the Studio 54 nightclub thanks to his links with its co-owner. He exemplifies why social scientists use the term "men who have sex with men" to complement "gay". According to Roger Stone, "Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men. Gays were weak, effeminate. He always seemed to have these young blond boys around. It just wasn't discussed. He was interested in power and access." Cohn died in 1986 of AIDS, despite having pulled strings to get into one of the first trials of AZT.

The playwright of Angels in America drew on Cohn's charisma and tragedy to make him a principal character, and he was played by Al Pacino in the miniseries adaptation.

Although the current author doesn't dress up any of Cohn's misdeeds, he doesn't pontificate either, making for an insightful and engrossing read.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough and interesting biography. While it succeeded in showcasing Roy’s selfish and uncaring nature, it also reveals the extent to which the myth of the man as the embodiment of ‘pure evil’ was cultivated by his political opponents, particularly Bobby Kennedy, out of jealousy over Roy’s success as a political outsider. I was shocked to learn that Bobby coveted Roy’s position as counsel to McCarthy before he adopted a public stance of anti-McCarthyism. Part of me rooted for Roy as an underdog rubbing his success in the noses of the WASP elite, but at the same time he is the definition of the person who climbs to safety, then pulls the ladder up behind them.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure I would have read this book if I had known that Steve Bannon had anything to do with it. I was aware of Roy Cohn’s connection to Trump. As I did with Trump I read about this man wanting to know what his childhood was like, what happened to him to make him the person he grew to be?This author starts Cohn’s story with the end of his life. I consider this a purposeful attempt to build empathy for the man whose life was steeped in corruption, but not without sprinkles of endearment. The title of this book should have been, “If they had brains they’d be dangerous.” Roy Cohn wasn’t the only one.

[Stephen Selbst · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and perceptive look at Roy Cohn, an evil borderline psychopath who championed right-wing politics, but, in the end was just a grifter. In Cohn’s long public life, he did many reprehensible things, including fighting gay rights despite being a semi-closeted gay man, serving as Joe McCarthy,s hatchet man, and improperly interfering in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The law finally caught up with Cohn. He was disbarred shortly before he died of AIDS. Von Hoffman’s biography is fair but makes clear his view that Cohn was a crook and a congenital liar.

[Joanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really tried on this one, wanting to get some contemporaneous understanding of Cohn. But this book is almost unreadable. I agree with other reviewers: too much info where it's not needed and not enough where it would help. Instead of paraphrasing comments from different parties, von Hoffman strings together unruly quotes from so many different speakers that by the time you've finished the page you have no idea who said what. And as it turns out those quotes had no real bearing on telling the story. I gave up. Maybe I'll try again another day.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Cohn's biography to get additional insight into why the former president behaves the way he does. Cohn was able to weasel his way through life using legal tricks and political maneuvers until almost the end of his life. He never paid for hardly any of his indiscretions - the first real truth being his diagnosis of AIDS. That he couldn't run from. He knew he was a fraud. He used people and they didn't care.

This book is thorough. I can't say I liked or didn't like it but it was informational.

[Kathy Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it came out in 1987, and explains a lot about one of the most unethical men ever licensed to practice law in New York and his protege at the time, Donald Trump. Trump was then pretending to be a billionaire and had not yet squandered Daddy Fred’s money. Fred made DJT a sociopath, and Cohn added the finer polishing on Daddy’s lessons in sociopathy. What is rather amazing is that Cohn was not finally nailed on his unethical conduct until just before he died and Donald had then already turned his back on Roy.

[Mary Lou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nothing about this book is redeeming. Cohn used the gossip columns to give him notoriety. This book was a continuation of rumor and did not get to the heart of Cohn. The author had no plans in his writing and no focus. I would not recommend.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suitably ghastly depiction of an exceptionally contrary gruesome creature. Struggled to start let alone finish this, but compelled to strive to understand such an individual. Spoiled and indulged from birth, a self-hating jew and gay, there's nothing to love here. How such a driven and articulate person might other have lived a kinder life in law or otherwise springs to mind, but ultimately you're left raging and lamenting of the numerous victims of his brutal criminal law pursuits, and relentless scheming and self serving fervour. He'd hate this book as he's rightfully depicted as an utter monster, and for that alone, I love it .

[Jay Sandover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in an unexpected style. Read it to understand the abuse of power.

[Helen Schneider · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very boring considering the fascinating life and personality of Roy Cohn.

[Norman Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very well-researched book about a disgusting man.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tedious at times. Went deep into some truly boring parts of Cohn’s life. I’d have liked more on the late 70s with Trump.