SAY what you like about Donald Trump but if there’s one industry that he has been genuinely good for, it’s the book trade. We’ve lost count of the books about him. Hot on the heels of John Bolton’s White House memoir, The Room Where It Happened is Too Much and Never Enough.
Too Much and Never Enough?
It’s the work of his niece, Mary L. Trump. To say it settles a few old scores and sheds new light on the family is as much an understatement.
What does she say in it?
She chronicles the alleged bullying of her father Fred Jnr into an early grave, how he was caught between the “cruelty and contempt” of his father, Fred Snr, and the boundless ambition of his brother, Donald.
Once, Donald mocked Fred Jnr, who was intent on becoming a commercial pilot, as “nothing but a glorified bus driver”. And there is more, much more, in vivid detail. The book’s telling subtitle is How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous
Man.
Presumably, she won’t be voting for him in November.
Her assertion that a second Trump term would mean “the end of American democracy” probably speaks for itself.
How much of an industry has Trump generated?
His day-to-day presidency, the Russia investigation and the move to impeach have all prompted insider memoirs and investigative books.
Michael Wolff made headlines with his explosive accounts, Fire and Fury, then Siege: Trump Under Fire. Bob Woodward wrote the more sober but equally riveting Fear: Trump in the White House. All were highly revealing about the extent of the dysfunction in the administration.
James Comey, fired as FBI director by Trump, wrote A Higher Loyalty, in which he described Trump as “unethical” and his presidency as a “forest fire”.
Any others?
Unhinged, by a former insider, Omarosa Manigault Newman, in which she writes about Trump’s “mental decline” and says that “lying is second nature” in his administration; A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig; Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, by David Frum; and A Warning, by Anonymous – a senior official in the administration – who believes Trump’s behaviour is “not tolerable” and “often embarrassing”. Proof of Collusion, by Seth Abramson, and the Mueller Report explore the Russia story. John Bolton is unsparing about Trump’s deficiencies. Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-attorney, is now said to be working on a book.
Any works of fiction?
Sam Bourne’s thought-provoking thriller, To Kill the President (2017) has an un-named, Trump-like Commander-in-Chief.
Pro-Trump books?
Lots of these, offering robust defences and alternative views of Trump. Among them is The Real Deal, by George A. Sorial and Damian Bates.
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