TL;DR
Charlie Kirk’s first book, written with Brent Hamachek during the 2016 campaign and published that October, four years after he founded Turning Point USA at eighteen. It makes his case for free markets and limited government to young readers.
When I wrote my tribute to Charlie Kirk, I learned he had written six books. I write books for a living and I had no idea. The campus clips were all I ever saw of him.
Time for a Turning Point was the first.
What is Time for a Turning Point about?
Two things. The first is the founding of Turning Point USA. Kirk left Harper College after one semester and started the organization in 2012, at eighteen, with Bill Montgomery, a retired businessman active in the Tea Party movement. The opening chapter, “Stopping by a Starbucks on a Snowy Afternoon,” goes back to those early days.
The second is the argument. Kirk and Brent Hamachek make the case for free markets, limited government and individual responsibility, aimed squarely at readers in high school and college. The chapter titles are blunt. “Big Government Sucks” is one. “The Effectiveness of Free Markets” and “The Fairness of Free Markets” make the economic case in two halves, and “Taking Back Our Campuses” previews the subject of his next book.
A late chapter, “Ending the Game Between Team Right and Team Left,” argues against politics as a sport. The authors wrote it during the 2016 campaign and called it a book of hope, not despair, arguing that turning the country back toward limited government would take more than one or two elections.
Post Hill Press published it on October 4, 2016, in a 288-page hardcover. Kirk was twenty-two. A paperback followed in 2021.
Who is Brent Hamachek?
A Chicago-area business consultant who founded the firm Segueway in 2000 and has advised privately owned businesses across dozens of industries. He sat on Turning Point USA’s advisory council and co-wrote numerous columns with Kirk over the years. After Kirk’s death he wrote The Intellect of Charlie Kirk. It traces their friendship back to a dinner in September 2013.
What else happened for Kirk in 2016?
It came out the same year Kirk became the youngest speaker at the Republican National Convention and the same year Forbes put him on its 30 Under 30 list.
Nine years later, in the days after he was killed in September 2025, the book was back on Amazon’s bestseller list.
Where does Time for a Turning Point fit among Kirk’s books?
It’s the foundation. The five books that followed, from Campus Battlefield to Stop, in the Name of God, build on the ideas and the organization this one introduced.
Keep reading
My tribute to Charlie Kirk: the folding table, the Prove Me Wrong sign and the young man who let people finish their sentences.
