Sen. John McCain's new memoir, 'The Restless Wave,' to hold 'nothing back'

Dan Nowicki | The Republic | azcentral.com

PHOENIX — A forthcoming memoir from Sen. John McCain promises to hold "nothing back" and "no-holds-barred opinions on the current developments coming out of Washington" under President Trump.

The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations is set for publication May 22 and will cover McCain's unsuccessful presidential campaign a decade ago and his time in the Senate during the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

McCain and Trump have had a notoriously rocky relationship since Trump first emerged as a Republican presidential contender in 2015. Since Trump moved into the Oval Office last year, McCain has remained one of his most high-profile Republican critics.

"McCain shares his experiences during the divisive 2016 election and his no-holds-barred opinions on the current developments coming out of Washington," according to advance publicity from his publisher, Simon & Schuster. "He also discusses the vital challenges from abroad: Russia, NATO, the campaign to defeat ISIS, our ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, among others. Candid, pragmatic, and always fascinating, John McCain holds nothing back in his latest memoir."

McCain, 81, is serving his sixth term as a Republican senator from Arizona. Since July, he has been battling a deadly form of brain cancer called glioblastoma. He has not been in Washington, D.C., since late last year and the timing of his return to the Senate is unknown. His office has not released an official update on McCain's health since Dec. 17.

For The Restless Wave, McCain teamed up again with Mark Salter, his former Senate chief of staff and longtime collaborator on books. They've written two previous McCain memoirs: 1999's Faith of My Fathers, which covered McCain's service in the Vietnam War, including his brutal captivity in a prisoner-of-war camp, and 2002's Worth the Fighting For, which covered the years after he was released as a POW, the launching of his political career in Arizona and his first run for president in 2000.

Faith of My Fathers was made into a 2005 TV movie starring Shawn Hatosy as McCain.

Arizona's junior senator, Republican Jeff Flake, last year wrote a book about the Republican Party and the rise of Trump, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle.

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