McKay Coppins

Journalist and biographer, and the author of Romney — A Reckoning, the Mitt Romney biography Kyle read “with explicit admiration” and a politics-of-character thesis running through the notes. Coppins is the biographer and the framing voice of that book.

His work also surfaces as a cross-reference inside Kyle’s notes on American Zion (Benjamin E. Park’s history of the LDS Church): Coppins’s Romney biography is “referenced explicitly as the same author’s earlier work on the same tradition,” tying together the political-and-faith intersection that both books circle. The two pages share the through-line of character, politics, and the Latter-day Saint tradition.

Context: McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a Latter-day Saint himself; Romney: A Reckoning (2023) was built on extensive access to Romney’s private journals and correspondence.

Where this appears

• Romney — A Reckoning — Coppins is the biographer and the book’s framing voice; Kyle read it with admiration for its politics-of-character thesis
• American Zion — Coppins’s Romney biography cited as the same author’s earlier work on the same religious-political tradition