Josh Shapiro’s new book: Why Trump told him he shouldn’t be president, disagreements over COVID-19 closures, and more

“Hey, Josh, it’s Donald Trump.”

It was the start of a voicemail from the president to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, received one week after a man firebombed the governor’s residence in Harrisburg in an attempt to kill Shapiro while his family slept inside on the first night of Passover.

Shapiro hadn’t recognized the number Trump was calling from, and at first didn’t answer.

When Shapiro called back, Trump offered well wishes to the governor’s family, his usual braggadocio, and some advice: he shouldn’t want to be president, Shapiro recalls in his new memoir, set to be released later this month.

The book, Where We Keep the Light, which comes out on Jan. 27, has attracted a flood of attention as it signals Shapiro’s potential presidential aspirations and also serves as a retort to the unflattering portrayal of the governor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent memoir.

» READ MORE: Josh Shapiro’s reelection campaign in Pennsylvania starts now — but 2028 looms large

In the 257-page book, Shapiro details his early life in Montgomery County, his two decades in elected office, his connection to his faith, and his pragmatic leadership approach.

And for the political observers who have watched Shapiro’s rise: He delves into his brief consideration of whether he should run for president after Joe Biden dropped out of the race in 2024, the whirlwind experience of being vetted to be Harris’ running mate, and the unfair scrutiny he felt he faced during that process.

Here are six takeaways from Shapiro’s forthcoming memoir, obtained by The Inquirer.

When Shapiro, 52, returned Trump’s call in April 2025, he received the president’s support and some unprompted compliments from Trump, he writes.

“[Trump] said he liked the way I talked to people and approached problems,” Shapiro retells, as Trump went through the list of potential 2028 Democratic Party presidential candidates. “He cautioned that I shouldn’t want to be president, given how dangerous it had become to hold the office now.”

(It is unclear whether Shapiro tried to call Trump after he experienced his own assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., the previous summer, though Shapiro publicly vehemently denounced the violence.)

Throughout the book, Shapiro details his approach to Trump. He picks his battles to be ones he is sure he will win, he writes, and is sympathetic to the struggles that led some voters to support Trump.

Shapiro sells himself as a pragmatist and writes proudly of the times in which he has disagreed with his party or changed his positions.

For example, he recalls being asked by Harris’ vetting team about his past comments criticizing Democrats in federal, state, and local offices for how they handled COVID-19 closures. He stood by his criticism of former Gov. Tom Wolf at the time over business and school closures, and of the mask and vaccine mandates implemented by the Biden administration, he writes.

“I respectfully pushed back, asking if they believed that we had gotten everything right, to which they generally agreed that we had not,” Shapiro writes about his conversation with Harris’ vetting team. “I just had been willing to say the quiet part out loud, even if it wasn’t easy or popular or toeing the line to do so.”

He also writes about his journey to change his position on the death penalty over the years. In the days after the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, in which 11 Jewish people were killed while worshipping, he had initially supported the death penalty for the suspect. Since then, his views have evolved and he no longer supports capital punishment and called on the legislature to end the practice.

Lori Shapiro, 53, mostly avoids her husband’s frequent appearances in the limelight.

The former Clinton administration official works mostly behind the scenes, except on a few issues important to her, including those relating to people with intellectual disabilities and ensuring girls have access to menstrual products in schools.

But in his book, Shapiro writes that his wife has challenged him as she has supported his political rise, pushing him to question what he really wants, do the right thing, or even help him shape his messaging to voters. She discouraged him from running for U.S. Senate in 2016 after top Democrats approached him, which led him to run for attorney general instead. She was also his first call when Biden dropped out and he briefly considered whether he should run for president, and his voice of reason during the veepstakes.

The couple started dating in high school, before breaking up during college when they went to different universities in New York — he attended the University of Rochester, while she went to Colgate University. Shapiro writes that he quickly realized he missed her, and wrote her a letter in an effort to win her back.

“So I cracked my knuckles, and wrote my heart out. I was Shakespeare composing a sonnet. I was Taylor Swift before Taylor Swift. I was Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, in a trench coat with the boom box over my head,” Shapiro writes. “I was getting the girl back.”

This earned Shapiro the title of “Mr. Lori” from her hall mates at Colgate. He did not win her back until years later, when the two reconnected in Washington after college, and quickly became engaged. The two married and had four children together, who each make frequent appearances throughout the book.

Shapiro is not without regret for how some of his career moves and ambitions affected the people who helped him get where he is today, he writes.

Shapiro got his start in politics on the Hill under then-U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel, a Montgomery County Democrat. He quickly worked his way up to be Hoeffel’s chief of staff before returning to Abington Township to run for state representative.

But when Shapiro was done with frequent trips to Harrisburg and ready for his next rung on the ladder, Hoeffel was in the way. Shapiro had a plan to run for county commissioner and flip the board for the first time in more than 150 years — making Montco the first Philadelphia collar county to swing into Democratic control. Now all of the Philly suburban counties are controlled by Democrats, and Shapiro is credited for starting the trend. But Hoeffel was not a part of that calculation.

Shapiro writes that Hoeffel was “struggling politically.” He says he told him he would not run against him, but he also would not run with him.

“I knew that I couldn’t win with him, and I knew that it wasn’t the right thing for the party or the county, even if we could somehow eke out the victory,” Shapiro writes.

Hoeffel eventually decided not to run, and was quoted in The Inquirer in 2017 as saying that loyalty is not Shapiro’s “strong suit,” comments he has since stood by, in addition to praising Shapiro for his successes ever since.

“I’d hear about [Hoeffel] talking to the press or to people behind my back about how he thought I lacked loyalty, that I was someone who needed to be watched,” Shapiro writes. “It felt terrible, and of course, I never intended to hurt him in any way and I would never have run against him. I wanted the Democrats to have a shot, and I knew that I could get it done.”

In the days after Harris passed over Shapiro to be her running mate in favor of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Shapiro said “antisemitism had no impact” on her decision.

Now, Shapiro questions whether he was unfairly scrutinized by Harris’ vetting team as the only Jewish person being considered as a finalist, including a moment when a top member of Harris’ camp asked him if he had “ever been an agent of the Israeli government.”

“I wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” he writes.

He details his broader concerns with how he was treated during the process, including some perceived insults about his family’s lack of wealth or Lori Shapiro’s appearance.

Since Shapiro’s book was leaked to the media over the weekend, sources close to Walz confirmed to ABC News that the Minnesota governor was also asked whether he was an agent of a foreign government, due to his multiple trips to China.

Shapiro, for his part, has written about his time in Israel, including a high school program in which he completed service projects on a farm, on a fishery at a kibbutz, and at an Israeli army base. He once described himself in his college student newspaper as a “past volunteer in the Israeli army” — a characterization that circulated widely after it was reported by The Inquirer during the veepstakes.

There is one person who had been influential during Shapiro’s many years of public service who is not mentioned once in the book: Mike Vereb.

Vereb, a former top aide to Shapiro, left the governor’s office shortly into his term after he was accused of sexual harassment of a female employee. The state paid the female employee $295,000 in a settlement over the claim.

Vereb had been along for the ride for Shapiro’s time in the state House as a fellow state representative from Montgomery County (though he was a Republican), as a top liaison to him in the attorney general’s office, and eventually a member of his cabinet in the governor’s office until his resignation in 2023.