An autobiography in which Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis recalls his ascent from Little League baseball hero to America’s most visible governor is set to be released in February, just as speculation about a possible White House candidacy in 2024 heats up.
The 44-year-old leader’s journey from Florida baseball diamonds to Yale and Harvard Law, time in the United States Navy, three terms in the United States House of Representatives, and his current position is expected to be detailed in “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.” While DeSantis has so far not announced plans to run for the GOP presidential nomination, novels like this one sometimes precede presidential ambitions.
“He reveals his thinking from when he was pushing back against COVID mandates and limitations, critical racism theory, woke companies, and what Broadside refers to as “the political legacy media,” according to a release from Broadside Books.
Broadside, a division of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins Publications, will release the book on February 28.
DeSantis secured a second term in Tallahassee earlier this month with a nearly 20-point margin of victory. The landslide was validation for DeSantis, who pushed to keep Florida’s economy and schools open and defied mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID crisis. He has also been a vocal critic of Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology in public schools.
“What Florida has done is build a governing template that has yielded actual outcomes while serving as a rebuke to the entrenched elites that have led our nation into the ground,” DeSantis said Fox News. “Florida demonstrates unequivocally that we, the people, are not powerless in the face of these elites.”
According to Fox News, the book will describe DeSantis’ boyhood in Dunedin, his exceptional academic record, and his time in the Navy after volunteering in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It will also cover his marriage to former television news anchor Casey DeSantis, as well as her struggle with breast cancer.
It will be DeSantis’ second book, following “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” a 2011 effort in which he recounted conservatives’ return to the values of the framers despite alienation in the “era of Obama.”
