What do you think?
Rate this book
Damaged People: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons
The son of renowned author Joe McGinniss—celebrated for works like The Selling of the President and true crime blockbusters Fatal Vision and Cruel Doubt—delivers a raw and deeply moving memoir that explores the complicated bonds between fathers and sons, set against a backdrop of fame, addiction, and the relentless pursuit of redemption.
Joe McGinniss was a a brilliant writer whose dazzling achievements were overshadowed by personal demons. At age twenty-six, he became the youngest living person to top the New York Times bestseller list, for his book The Selling of the President about Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign. Shortly after, he walked out on his wife and their three young children.
His oldest son, Joe McGinniss Jr., went on to become a writer himself, known for his critically acclaimed novels The Delivery Man and Carousel Court. In the memoir Damaged People, McGinniss Jr. vividly recounts his affectionate yet stormy relationship with his famous father, capturing moments of tenderness and humor amid the chaos and tension.
The prosaic commitments of full-time fatherhood held little appeal for Joe McGinniss, a superstar author who proudly relished the freedom to chase stories anywhere his curiosity led. He rose to prominence with a trilogy of true crime blockbusters in the 1980s and early ’90s, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt. Notoriously, he found himself the subject of Janet Malcom’s The Journalist and the Murderer, a book accusing him of manipulating one of his subjects. Controversy would dog the rest of his journalistic career, as he was accused of falsifying details in his 1993 biography of Ted Kennedy and his 2011 biography of Sarah Palin. His life was a turbulent mix of success and scandal, marked by alcoholism, depression, and an obsessive dedication to his craft that often left his family struggling to stay afloat.
Now a father raising a son of his own, McGinniss Jr. wrestles with the legacy of his upbringing and his father’s self-destruction, striving to create a stable and nurturing environment for his child. The pressures of modern parenting—ranging from competitive school admissions to the mental health challenges that today’s youth face—force him to confront long-buried demons of ambition and obsession. Damaged People dives deep into the heartbreak of unfulfilled expectations and the beauty of second chances, offering an unflinching look at what it means to grow into a more compassionate and present parent.
Bringing a novelist’s storytelling skills to this deeply personal story, McGinniss Jr. delivers a poignant tale of grace, resilience, and growth, showing us that even in the face of fractured relationships, there’s hope for healing and a brighter future.
Joe McGinniss was a a brilliant writer whose dazzling achievements were overshadowed by personal demons. At age twenty-six, he became the youngest living person to top the New York Times bestseller list, for his book The Selling of the President about Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign. Shortly after, he walked out on his wife and their three young children.
His oldest son, Joe McGinniss Jr., went on to become a writer himself, known for his critically acclaimed novels The Delivery Man and Carousel Court. In the memoir Damaged People, McGinniss Jr. vividly recounts his affectionate yet stormy relationship with his famous father, capturing moments of tenderness and humor amid the chaos and tension.
The prosaic commitments of full-time fatherhood held little appeal for Joe McGinniss, a superstar author who proudly relished the freedom to chase stories anywhere his curiosity led. He rose to prominence with a trilogy of true crime blockbusters in the 1980s and early ’90s, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt. Notoriously, he found himself the subject of Janet Malcom’s The Journalist and the Murderer, a book accusing him of manipulating one of his subjects. Controversy would dog the rest of his journalistic career, as he was accused of falsifying details in his 1993 biography of Ted Kennedy and his 2011 biography of Sarah Palin. His life was a turbulent mix of success and scandal, marked by alcoholism, depression, and an obsessive dedication to his craft that often left his family struggling to stay afloat.
Now a father raising a son of his own, McGinniss Jr. wrestles with the legacy of his upbringing and his father’s self-destruction, striving to create a stable and nurturing environment for his child. The pressures of modern parenting—ranging from competitive school admissions to the mental health challenges that today’s youth face—force him to confront long-buried demons of ambition and obsession. Damaged People dives deep into the heartbreak of unfulfilled expectations and the beauty of second chances, offering an unflinching look at what it means to grow into a more compassionate and present parent.
Bringing a novelist’s storytelling skills to this deeply personal story, McGinniss Jr. delivers a poignant tale of grace, resilience, and growth, showing us that even in the face of fractured relationships, there’s hope for healing and a brighter future.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
288 pages, Hardcover
Published October 21, 2025
3 people are currently reading
1897 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 29, 2025
I've read all three of Joe McGinniss Jr.'s books - two fantastic noir novels and this first work of nonfiction - and I can unequivocally state that Joe has inherited whatever creative gene his father, the celebrated and controversial journalist Joe McGinniss, had for writing powerful, compelling, un-put-down-able narratives. While I was expecting this to be a difficult story about his relationship with his father, I didn't realize Joe would spend so much time looking inwardly at his own relationship with his son, Jayson. I admire the honesty and painful self-examination Joe shares in this book and found it helpful when reflecting on my relationship with my own father and my children. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wonders about how trauma, addiction, depression, and other forms of mental illness can impact families for generations.
February 15, 2026
Way too long and very boring. Considering I really enjoyed his two previous novels, this was quite disappointing. Yes, it’s a memoir and not your typical novel, but hearing a 50yo something man whinging about his dad non-stop and saying how special his son is for about 260 pages was unbearable.
January 25, 2026
I knew the kind and generous Joe Sr who helped young writers. The story of his later life as told here by Joe Jr is very sad.
October 26, 2025
In the 1970s and ’80s, a time when prominent print journalists still could achieve wealth and celebrity status, Joe McGinniss stood at the pinnacle of his profession. Before reaching his 27th birthday, his book, THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT 1968 --- the story of the successful effort masterminded by young TV producer Roger Ailes to repackage and market Richard Nixon in his second presidential run --- became a massive bestseller and remains an essential political campaign handbook to this day. His true-crime book, FATAL VISION --- the account of US Army Special Forces Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald’s savage murder of his wife and two young daughters --- spawned an NBC miniseries, the first episode of which was viewed by 60 million Americans.
But there was a dark side to this gleaming picture of professional achievement. That’s the story that Joe McGinniss Jr. painfully but eloquently recounts in DAMAGED PEOPLE. In his disturbing, often heartbreaking, memoir, Joe Jr. twins his candid postmortem of the wreckage of his father’s life with an account of his own struggles to parent his son Jayson, a bright, sensitive only child, devoted to the game of basketball with aspirations of someday playing professionally.
Joe Jr. ignored his father’s career advice and, after graduating from Swarthmore College, eventually found his way into the family business, producing two novels to date. His memoir, which shifts frequently between its two narratives, takes its title from the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas, Joe Sr.’s close friend, who took his own life in 1997: “All writers are, to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves.”
In Joe Sr.’s case, much of the damage stemmed from a childhood of “cold, quiet dysfunction” in Rye, New York, in the household of a depressed, alcoholic mother frequently hospitalized for her illness, and an emotionally absent father. As an adult, work became Joe Sr.’s refuge, to the exclusion of any true concern for the well-being of his wife or children. “Writing came first for him,” Joe Jr. writes, “always and ahead of everything --- family, money, and stability.” After fathering two girls, and when his wife was pregnant with Joe Jr., he abandoned the family home in suburban Philadelphia to move in with his girlfriend, Nina, in New Jersey, later relocating to Williamstown, Massachusetts, and marrying her.
After his initial run of professional success, an embarrassing lawsuit by Jeffrey MacDonald and a brutal dissection of his journalistic ethics by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker and a later book launched McGinniss’ career on a downward spiral at a time when it should have been flourishing. His decision to forfeit the $1.7 million advance he received to write a book about the O.J. Simpson trial when he decided he had “nothing to say” about the notorious case was the final blow. By the time of his death from prostate cancer in 2014, his sustained lack of productivity, and a run of disastrous stock trading amid the unraveling of the tech bubble, he had squandered the multimillion-dollar net worth his writing had generated and faced imminent eviction from his Massachusetts home.
But the true darkness in Joe Sr.’s life involved his alcoholism and decades-long abuse of highly addictive prescription drugs he consumed to deal with his depression and its related effects. The catalog of those medications is staggering. In 2001, when he had fled his second wife and the two troubled sons of that union for a teaching job in Italy, he made multiple suicide attempts, eventually landing briefly in a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts after Nina flew to Rome to retrieve him.
Though he’s had his own encounters with depression, Joe Jr. has been fortunate to escape the McGinniss family history of substance abuse. Paradoxically, it seems, the legacy of his father’s indifference manifested in his case in an intrusive, demanding parenting style, particularly when it came to micromanaging Jayson’s basketball career. When faced with the choice between offering encouragement and support, or berating Jayson at moments when he fell short of the high standards his father set for him, Joe Jr. inevitably chose the latter. It’s painful to watch his vivid recreations of some of their most difficult encounters, but it’s ultimately reassuring to watch the evolution of their relationship over time.
Whether he’s describing his father’s shortcomings or assessing his own failings as a parent, Joe Jr. is unsparing. DAMAGED PEOPLE is an almost relentlessly bleak book, but what redeems it from voyeurism and makes it well worth reading is Joe Jr.’s candor and graceful writing that would elicit his father’s pride even as he undoubtedly would cringe at some of the harrowing scenes portrayed here. It wouldn’t be accurate to describe this memoir as a cautionary tale, because the seeds of Joe McGinniss’ downfall were, to a significant extent, rooted in his DNA and in the particulars of the environment in which he was raised. But it’s at least a reminder to think twice before envying anyone’s professional achievements without knowing the price exacted to attain them.
Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
But there was a dark side to this gleaming picture of professional achievement. That’s the story that Joe McGinniss Jr. painfully but eloquently recounts in DAMAGED PEOPLE. In his disturbing, often heartbreaking, memoir, Joe Jr. twins his candid postmortem of the wreckage of his father’s life with an account of his own struggles to parent his son Jayson, a bright, sensitive only child, devoted to the game of basketball with aspirations of someday playing professionally.
Joe Jr. ignored his father’s career advice and, after graduating from Swarthmore College, eventually found his way into the family business, producing two novels to date. His memoir, which shifts frequently between its two narratives, takes its title from the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas, Joe Sr.’s close friend, who took his own life in 1997: “All writers are, to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves.”
In Joe Sr.’s case, much of the damage stemmed from a childhood of “cold, quiet dysfunction” in Rye, New York, in the household of a depressed, alcoholic mother frequently hospitalized for her illness, and an emotionally absent father. As an adult, work became Joe Sr.’s refuge, to the exclusion of any true concern for the well-being of his wife or children. “Writing came first for him,” Joe Jr. writes, “always and ahead of everything --- family, money, and stability.” After fathering two girls, and when his wife was pregnant with Joe Jr., he abandoned the family home in suburban Philadelphia to move in with his girlfriend, Nina, in New Jersey, later relocating to Williamstown, Massachusetts, and marrying her.
After his initial run of professional success, an embarrassing lawsuit by Jeffrey MacDonald and a brutal dissection of his journalistic ethics by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker and a later book launched McGinniss’ career on a downward spiral at a time when it should have been flourishing. His decision to forfeit the $1.7 million advance he received to write a book about the O.J. Simpson trial when he decided he had “nothing to say” about the notorious case was the final blow. By the time of his death from prostate cancer in 2014, his sustained lack of productivity, and a run of disastrous stock trading amid the unraveling of the tech bubble, he had squandered the multimillion-dollar net worth his writing had generated and faced imminent eviction from his Massachusetts home.
But the true darkness in Joe Sr.’s life involved his alcoholism and decades-long abuse of highly addictive prescription drugs he consumed to deal with his depression and its related effects. The catalog of those medications is staggering. In 2001, when he had fled his second wife and the two troubled sons of that union for a teaching job in Italy, he made multiple suicide attempts, eventually landing briefly in a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts after Nina flew to Rome to retrieve him.
Though he’s had his own encounters with depression, Joe Jr. has been fortunate to escape the McGinniss family history of substance abuse. Paradoxically, it seems, the legacy of his father’s indifference manifested in his case in an intrusive, demanding parenting style, particularly when it came to micromanaging Jayson’s basketball career. When faced with the choice between offering encouragement and support, or berating Jayson at moments when he fell short of the high standards his father set for him, Joe Jr. inevitably chose the latter. It’s painful to watch his vivid recreations of some of their most difficult encounters, but it’s ultimately reassuring to watch the evolution of their relationship over time.
Whether he’s describing his father’s shortcomings or assessing his own failings as a parent, Joe Jr. is unsparing. DAMAGED PEOPLE is an almost relentlessly bleak book, but what redeems it from voyeurism and makes it well worth reading is Joe Jr.’s candor and graceful writing that would elicit his father’s pride even as he undoubtedly would cringe at some of the harrowing scenes portrayed here. It wouldn’t be accurate to describe this memoir as a cautionary tale, because the seeds of Joe McGinniss’ downfall were, to a significant extent, rooted in his DNA and in the particulars of the environment in which he was raised. But it’s at least a reminder to think twice before envying anyone’s professional achievements without knowing the price exacted to attain them.
Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
October 29, 2025
I wanted more of the story between the author and his son, and less of the author and his father. Maybe I've had enough alcoholic white guy stories in my life (both in reading and in reality) but I had very little tolerance or interest in Senior.
When I was reading about his dad, I could see that he wanted to get the point across, and the story across, including the mean/indifferent/uncaring things, but I know from personal experience that you also can think I'm making it sound worse than it was, he loved me in his own way, etc. And that came through a little too much.
The relationship with his son was interesting and compelling and I wanted to know more.
When I was reading about his dad, I could see that he wanted to get the point across, and the story across, including the mean/indifferent/uncaring things, but I know from personal experience that you also can think I'm making it sound worse than it was, he loved me in his own way, etc. And that came through a little too much.
The relationship with his son was interesting and compelling and I wanted to know more.
January 8, 2026
I've been a fan of Joe McGinniss Jr since his first novel came out in 2008, but I knew very little of Joe McGinniss senior prior to this reading. The story McGinniss Jr tells is a deeply personal one, both heartwarming and heart-wrenching, at times endearing yet harrowing, exploring the depths and limitations of fatherhood, the lessons learned, the shadow of legacy we carry forward, and the desire to change that legacy for the better.
October 23, 2025
A brilliant book. I read it in a day. It’s beautifully written, and it made me reflect on my relationship with my own father as well as my choice not to have children. If you’re looking for an emotional, reflective, challenging read, this is the book for you.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews