12 best books about Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump is the 47th President of the United States of America and only the second president to return to office after losing re-election at the end of his first tenure. Trump’s emergence seems controversial to many persons especially in view of the odds against him before the 2024 elections. To many others he is loved and seen as the man to make America great again. Understanding the nature and character of the Donald Trump may require a study of books that have documented the chemistry of this man. There are books on the biography and background of the favorite son of Manhattan real estate mogul Fred Trump. A number of these books are personal testimony from people who at different points in his storied career were invited to Donald Trump’s inner circle along with studies of the 45th and 47th president’s words and actions. Here are some of the best books to read about Donald Trump to understand who he is and how he operates.
1. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
By Mary L Trump
The book documents Trump’s sickness according to the author, a trained psychologist who is also Trump’s niece. The author describes Trump as a damaged individual, emotionally stunted and morally warped by his upbringing, whose “toxic positivity” has infected the US. The author describes in details how his uncle (Donald Trump) is very vindictive, adding that if he’s re-elected she intends to apply for a British passport. Well, Trump got re-elected as the 47th President of USA so let’s hope the author will not be driven to such an act of reckless desperation just because of perceived hatred for her uncle.
2. How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language
By Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts
This is an anthology of Donald Trump’s bird-brained tweets which reflect the early days when, like a door-to-door salesman too shiftless to leave home, he used Twitter to tout the shoddy merchandise he and Melania were marketing on the Shopping Network. The authors, Oborne and Roberts, present Trump at his most naively flashy state, and preserve some treasurable illiteracies. One key instance the authors mentioned was when Trump berates the Chinese for committing an “unpresidented act” by confiscating a US navy drone – a precedent for his own imminent unpresidenting. This is a good book that provides insight about the man called Donald Trump.
3. Rage
By Bob Woodward
This book was written by renowned Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. The first book he wrote on Trump is entitled Fear, and this was during Trump’s tenure as the 45th president. After releasing that book the president immediately got him on the phone to say that the book would be “bad” on account of Woodward failing to penetrate the defenses of White House staff that kept the president out of the reporter’s reach. In Rage, Woodward takes up Trump’s offer of access; this book includes lengthy and revealing passages of the president reflecting over everything from his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the day-to-day experience of Black Americans. In 2022 Woodward did something unprecedented by releasing the actual audio recordings of his nineteen interviews with the president as well as an interview from the 2016 campaign trail as an audiobook, giving listeners opportunity to hear Trump’s words directly. Rage is an intriguing piece which you should read to understand the chemistry of Trump while in the White House.
4. American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
By Tim Alberta
The author documents traits of moral cowardice and seamy self-interest by the Republicans who seemingly shrugged off their principles just to surrender to Trump’s hostile takeover of their party and make “a deal with the devil”. Trump’s Vice President in his first term in office, Mike Pence once told friends that he “loathed Trump”, and Lindsey Graham aptly defined him as “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot”. Moments later they and their cronies got down to some slavish bootlicking. This is another intriguing book on Trump.
5. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
By Michael Wolff
In this book, the author documented Trump’s scandalous record by implying, with no evidence at all, that Trump and Nikki Haley used Air Force One as their flying motel room. The author impressively analyzes the complicity between Trump and the journalists whom he officially reviles.
6. Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention
By Wayne Barrett
This book was first published in 1991, shortly after Donald J. Trump’s own ghostwritten book Trump: The Art of the Deal, was released. The author who is the reporter of Village Voice, an American news and culture publication documents how the real estate mogul made Trump Tower happen which was at the time Trump’s crowning achievement. The author shows Trump operating in a domain he knows well – Manhattan real estate – and doing whatever it took to get the deal done. The book further digs into Trump’s biography to paint a portrait of the mogul at the peak of his powers, just before his run of bankruptcies in the 1990s – and more than a decade before his comeback via The Apprentice TV series. This book provides insight on Trump’s real estate dealings in Manhattan. The book was updated and re-released in 2016, after Trump got into the presidential race. Sadly, the author, Wayne Barrett died at age 71 on January 19, 2017, the day before Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. This is an intriguing piece about the Donald Trump anyone would like to read.
7. A Very Stable Genius: Donald J Trump’s Testing of America
By Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig
The authors adopt a hilarious approach to narrate Trump’s incompetence in office. This book is described as the blackest of comedies yet an indepth documentation of Trump’s incompetence in office as perceived by the authors. The authors also provided a glimpse of Trump’s cynicism as he sneers at the suckers who voted for him. “I’m a total act,” he told his director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci, “and I don’t understand why people don’t get it.” The authors cited the moment when, while updating his claim to be a genius, Trump invited them (the authors) to admire his “magnificently brilliant” answers in a television interview; I’d rather trust his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who viewed him as “a fucking moron”.
8. Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
By Ben Fountain
The author’s documentation shows he is the most lethal among all the “haters”, as Trump refers to his critics. His descriptions of Trump come across as an exercise in black magic, and every metaphor is a graphic curse: head like a battering ram, eyes of a garbage-guzzling raccoon, hair sculpted by a flamethrower, verbal drivel like a slurry. The authors anger seems justified as it resulted from an underlying grief over Trumps time in office in his first term as the 45th president of USA. The book, derived from articles commissioned by the Guardian, broods about an ideal America that Trump has defiled and debased, perhaps irreparably. This is a must read to understand another side of Donald Trump
9. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
By Maggie Haberman
This book which was published in 2022 was written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter who covered the White House throughout the 45th presidency. The book provides insights from hundreds of interviews with Trump’s personal and professional associates. The author uses the interviews to project an image of Trump as a person whose most enduring relationships are transactional, and for whom organizational chaos brings comfort. This book has intriguing content from cover to cover.
10. Full Disclosure
By Stormy Daniels
The author giggles at what she described as Trump’s unimpressive tackle, deplores his lack of coital stamina, and grimaces at the puddle he leaves on her tummy. Worst of all is his whiny plea for a second date. Trump told the journalist Bob Woodward that he wanted to be feared, which is the hope of all would-be autocrats. The author writes that the way to bring Trump down is not to shudder in alarm but to shake with incredulous mirth. This is an intriguing documentation from insider perspectives.
11. Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents
By Pete Souza
This book was written by the former official White House photographer during the tenure of Barack Obama. The book juxtaposes pictures of American President Barack Obama with tweets from his successor Donald Trump. The author compares the two administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump via photos of Obama side-by-side with tweets, headlines and quotes from the Trump administration. The book which was published in 2018 was written by the author of the #1 best-seller Obama: An Intimate Portrait.
12. Peril
By Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
Bob Woodward is reputed to have written two popular works, Fear and Rage, on Trump but to write this third book he enlisted the help of his Washington Post colleague Robert Costa. These two authors conducted interviews with more than 200 people and collected confidential documents and emails to provided indepth analysis of the final days of the Trump administration and the first 100 days of the Biden presidency. Those who have read Fear and Rage no doubt would like to get the final word from Woodward. This book is another nice work on Donald Trump.
