Another highly publicised book on US President Donald Trump, this one by the acclaimed journalist Bob Woodward, who is a great inspiration for countless journalists around the world.
Like similar books, many extracts appeared in the media before the book hit the stands. Everything in the book is about recent events. So if you have been keenly following the current developments, there isn't a lot you will find startling or new in this book.
What the book does provide though are a large number of anecdotes: conversations between the President and multiple White House advisers, high and low in the hierarchy. They all show how Trump is out of sync with what is generally believed is acceptable.
These anecdotes also reveal the sort of person Trump is: someone who is not only passionate about what he believes in but also determined to put to practice what he wants to do. Most of the official government policies are not thought-through, and stem out of Trump's personal beliefs, irrespective of whether they make sense in the political, diplomatic, economic or social sense.
He doesn't care whether others agree with him or not. What he thinks right is right. So we have many advisers countering Trump's suggestions with facts and figures. But that makes little impact on Trump, who just brushes them aside.
For example, one extract from the book:
"The president clung to an outdated view of America—locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines. ... Several times (Former president of Goldman Sachs and the president's top economic advisor Gary) Cohn just asked the president, "Why do you have these views?" "I just do," Trump replied. "I've had these views for 30 years." "That doesn't mean they're right," Cohn said. "I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn't mean I was right."
While the author has done a lot of meticulous research to gather data -- just as a journalist would do -- this book only adds to the surfeit of anti-Trump lowdown we are already deluged with.
I really liked the book only because of the extensive research Bob has done to put this together, which will prove invaluable not now but many years later when Trump is history.
View all my reviews