I think an evaluation of The Real Romney turns on whether it provides new information to the reader, information that would help a swing voter make up his or her mind. I think Kranish & Helman succeed on that metric. We learn that Romney’s family history is deeply intertwined with the history of Mormonism and that he served an important role as a lay leader in the church. We learn that as a lay leader Romney counseled a woman facing a woman facing a difficult birth against having an abortion. We learn that Romney keeps most acquaintances distant, but can be silly (or more, dorky) with his family and close friends. We learn that Romney assiduously courted gay voters during his run for the U.S. Senate. We learn that Romney ran the first post-9/11 Olympics (ok, I probably already should have known this one). We learn that Romney’s advisors counseled against his ill-fated decision to focus on social issues during his 2008 presidential run.

Most of the book is devoted to the history of Romney’s patriline post-Mormonism conversion sparked immigration, his work for his church, his career at Bain, his U.S. Senate run, his tenure as head of the Winter Olympics, and his tenure as governor of Massachusetts. His 2008 and 2012 presidential runs are given pretty cursory review. An entire chapter is devoted to Romneycare.

The Real Romney compares very favorably with a similar just-in-time-for-the-election biography from 2008—Obama: From Promise to Power by Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell. Mendell’s biography was pretty thin and wound up relying heavily on Obama’s own book to cover Obama’s early life. Romney has a much longer political career (going back to his U.S. Senate run) than Obama did in 2008, and the Boston Globe has been covering him much longer than the Chicago Tribune had Obama. It shows. This isn’t a Robert Caro work, but it’s an extremely valuable voice about Romney right now.

The Real Romney very much reads like a series of long newspaper articles. That’s both good and bad. Kranish & Helman give the facts. But they don’t engage in a lot of in-depth analysis. So the critical portions consist of repeating the attacks of his critics. This is unsatisfactory for a couple reasons: those statements are not explored in greater depth and they come off as sour grapes, both of which makes them difficult to judge.