Required reading: Mitt Rommey

Our pick of must-read books about the US Republican presidential candidate.

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney ended a long war of attrition against his GOP colleagues late last week, when he finally secured the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

The former Massachusetts governor gained the benchmark 1,144 delegates via a comfortable win in the Texas primary. Romney will now face Barack Obama in a November election that looks set to run close: Gallup pollsters currently have the pair tied at 46 per cent of vote preferences each. So who is the 65-year-old who may be the next US president?

• It seems only fair to give Romney himself the first chance to answer. No Apology: Believe in America weaves Romney's memories of a Mormon childhood in Michigan – his father George was the governor of that state and made an unsuccessful run at the GOP nomination in 1968 – around the policies that he will run on in November. Fiscal discipline and a strong military, says Romney, are key to 21st-century consolidation of American superpower status.

• It's Romney's "religion problem", say some analysts – he's still a practising Mormon – that may end his dream of the presidency. Read A Mormon in the White House? to learn why some conservative evangelical Christians are worried.

• Romney spent $45 million (Dh165m) of his own money during his unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Republican nomination, when he lost to John McCain. Read The Real Romney by the Boston Globe reporters Scott Helman and Michael Kranish to learn how he made an estimated $250 million at the private equity firm Bain Capital by purchasing struggling businesses, turning them around and selling them on. Helman and Kranish also address Romney's other challenge: his reputation for "flip-flopping" on issues such as abortion and immigration.

• In Mitt Romney: A Look Inside the Man and his Politics, the Romney adviser Ronald Scott attempts to unravel the policy tangle, but concludes that Romney is a man prone to saying what he thinks others want to hear. Will that prove his greatest asset, or his undoing? Come November, we'll find out.