Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci
World's #1 Thriller Writer: "STOP SCROLLING and BE HUMAN AGAIN" - David Baldacci
14 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: How does David Baldacci's writing reflect human complexity?
The best books that I ever read, it wasn't just that they were fun. It was like when I walked away from them, I felt changed internally. And I started thinking about things otherwise I never would have focused on at all. Humans do that. It changes who they are because you carry forward their perspective throughout the rest of your life.
You look at the world differently and that's what really good books do. When I write books, I try to examine the humans in it. It's not just an action story. I want you to dig down and what drives people to do stuff like this, whether it's good or bad or in between. And guess what? Good people do bad things and bad people occasionally do good things.
So that's what's so complicated about the world. I want people to get off their phones and actually look life again. I want people to relate to people and try to understand them and not stare at things on the screen because we're missing so much in life.
The older I get, the more books I write, and the way the world is these days, my message in these books is, let's go back to being human beings again. And if I can help you do that by showing that human beings are really, really complicated, they're really, really fun just to take apart and see what makes them tick, it's a better way to spend your time than doing scrolling.
Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is David Balducci, who has an amazing new book about to come out, Hope Rises. How many books now, David? Fifty?
I think all told with my young adult stuff, it's like 60 books, but I didn't, I stopped counting a while ago.
All right. Well, I, I was a, I mean, I'll confess. I was a 32 year old man. When I read a book, I, I picked it up in a bookstore called Brentano's, which is no longer around. Right. And the title of the book was absolute power. How about that one? Remember that one?
Long time ago.
I want to start with your background, your legal background, how you got into storytelling and to become this prolific, incredibly successful writer. Then we're going to talk about this amazing book.
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Chapter 2: What experiences shaped David Baldacci's journey as a writer?
I was a history buff, and I'd read about Kennedy and all the Tristan affairs he had. And I thought, what if I had a president who had an affair and something really bad happened, and they had to kill the woman, and there had to be a cover-up? I thought that could be an interesting story, and that turned out to be absolute power.
you have the formula. Okay. You know, there's a few people and I'm a book lover and this podcast is all about interviewing authors. Okay. But you have something in these books where it makes the brain thirsty. You can't, you know, I had a, I had a stay up two o'clock in the morning, finishing this because I was like, I got another page and another page. And so I,
So let's talk about Hope Rising because it's the sequel to Nash Falls. I don't want to give too much away to people, but this is sort of a new story for you. Who is Walter Nash? Let's start there. And how do we find him in the story arc from the first book into this book?
So in Nashville, Walter Nash is a businessman. I mean, he's different from anybody I've written about before. He's, you know, never fired a gun in anger, never lifted a weight, never been in law enforcement, never been with any federal agency. But he's done really well. He's achieved the American dream, you know. He's done everything they were supposed to do. He went to a good school.
He worked hard. He made money. He and his wife and daughter have a nice life. The only smudge in his relationship, in his life, is with his father, who he was estranged from. His father was a Vietnam veteran. They had a falling out.
The beginning of Nash Falls, the first book, he's going to his father's funeral and he goes to the funeral with his wife and daughter and his father's best friend from Vietnam gets up, gives a eulogy and trashes Walter Nash in front of everyone, which is just a horrific sort of event for him.
He goes home and late that night, he's out in his backyard trying to process all this and then out of the darkness, this FBI agent shows up and gives him a choice. He said, the organization you work for, you made all this money from, they're a criminal organization. So here's your choice. One, you can work with us and lose everything you have.
Or two, you don't work with us and you lose everything you have. Those are the choices. And that really sets Nash off on this journey, you know, to try to bring this organization down. And he does it with enormous personal cost. And then we come to Hope Rises where he has changed who he is completely, physically and mentally and emotionally. And he's sort of right in the monster's lair.
You know, he's on the inside trying to bring this organization down in a different part of the world. And then I throw him a lot of curveballs because, look, when Nash Falls ended sort of mid-story, I got like 10,000 emails from people who were royally pissed off that I had not finished the book and the first novel. But I needed an entire second novel to finish the story.
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Chapter 3: What is the storyline of Baldacci's latest book, Hope Rises?
I'm with you. And I'm going to mention some of these people that I've met when I'm not doom scrolling, okay? Amos Decker. Yeah.
Yeah.
Allelosius, I think I'm pronouncing it right, but I mean, that is one Southern name about the Allelosius archer. Okay. Uh, and others of course, but what makes Nash, what makes Walter Nash different? What's the specific emotional or thematic territory that you're exploring here where you didn't explore with others? I mean, I, I know it, but I want you to say it to the audience.
Yeah. So Amos Decker, he was a, he's a detective. He is a policeman. So he chose that life and that profession. Archer was a, he's a detective in LA in the fifties. He chose that profession. He chose that he wanted to live his life that way. Walter Nash chose none of this. You know, he didn't want any part of this world.
He was perfectly happy with the life that he had, but he was involuntarily thrust into this nightmare. And then he had to try to make sense of it and then not just make sense of it. He had to survive it. And then on top of that, he had to avenge people that he really loved and cared about. So for him, I threw him the most difficult challenge I've thrown any of my characters before.
Here's a guy who does not want to be in this book, but he's in the book and now he has to get to the end of it.
Oh, yeah. But I mean, the other thing is like, you know, when you've written your past books about people that are having affairs, they're living these dual identities and they're almost double agents in their own lives, right? They're talking to their wife in one way, they're talking to their mistress in another way. And I feel you capture that with Nash.
I feel like he's working for the FBI, but he's inside this criminal empire simultaneously. And so what does that say about the double agent existence and about the nature of loyalty and identity? What were you trying to capture there?
I wanted to let people say that you can play two dissimilar roles at the same time, you know, and people do that all the time. I'm not just talking if you're a spy or not, but if you think about the course of your day and who you deal with and who you talk to throughout the day, you may become one person during the morning when you have to meet with a certain set of people.
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Chapter 4: How does Walter Nash's character differ from Baldacci's previous protagonists?
I do that.
I do that all the time. And I'll, I'll give you another football analogy.
Um,
I like to think that I write in the trenches. I've tried to write from outline. Never anything that I put in the outline actually ends up in the book. It's just a waste of time for me. It works for some writers. It doesn't work for me. I like to write in the trenches. What's that?
Not to interrupt you, sir, but I feel that from your writing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Writing so fresh. I'm like, this guy doesn't, I mean, I feel like you're typing while I'm reading. You know what I mean? All right, let me go again and see what he's doing.
Exactly right. And when you, when you read, you're reading the novel and you go, wow, I didn't know that Nash was going to go in that direction. Then fast, you know, go back seven months. I'm sitting in my computer going, wow, I didn't know Nash was going to go in that direction. So I, I always get this analogy about, you know, being in the moment and where you're thinking the best.
So if you're Tom Brady in practice and, you know that nobody on the defense is going to touch you. You know, they're just not going to touch you. So where are you thinking the best? Where do you see everything crisply, all 11 guys on the other side, and you're making your best decisions? There's no pressure. There's no stress.
If he's playing in a game where 11 guys on the other side want to kill him, that's where the synapses fire off faster. That's where he's processing. That's where everything slows down and he sees the field. When I'm writing in the novel, that's where I am. If I'm in an outline, I'm in practice. I'm in football practice. I can always say, I haven't figured that out yet.
I'll just kick the can down the road. If you're writing the novel, there's no kicking the can down the road. You have to go to another level to really dig out what needs to be written at that moment. And that's where I do my best stuff.
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Chapter 5: What themes of revenge and identity are explored in Hope Rises?
I get that. But I don't want it to stop there. I want people to keep thinking about this stuff.
I mean, listen, you're writing, when I think of David Balducci, I think of a lover of humanity. And I mean all the complexity of humanity, the good, the bad, the evil, the bad. the indecisiveness, the impetuosity, the planning. I mean, the whole emotional spectrum of humanity, I feel like you will take the good and bad. There's an unconditional love that you have for the human species, okay?
And it comes out in your writing, sir. And so that's why I'm always drawn to your books. Okay, so we're down to the point in the podcast where we've got five words. My producer and I pluck these words out of your book. Okay. And so I'm going to say the word and then you give me like a sentence. Okay. All right. And since you're Italian, maybe give me two sentences on the first word. Okay.
You're ready.
Revenge.
Revenge, David.
It's always a dish best served cold and you get a hell of a lot of it in this book.
And even though we're not supposed to want it and they tell you you're digging two graves, we're all locked in, right? We know that about ourselves, right? Okay. Second word, Nash, which is our character here.
A man who didn't want to be there, but now that he's there, he's going to get the job done.
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