Fear
Trump in the White House
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4.0 • 83 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
THE OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘Fear is a meticulously researched account of a White House and a president in financial, legal and personal disorder . . . essential reading’ Daily Mail
THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT.
With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.
Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.
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'I think you’ve always been fair' President Donald J. Trump, in a call to Bob Woodward, August 14, 2018
'The sheer weight of anecdotes depicts a man with no empathy and a pathological capacity for lying' Financial Times
'Fear depicts a White House awash in dysfunction, where the Lord of the Flies is the closest thing to an owner's manual' The Guardian
'Though his books are often sensational, he is the opposite of sensationalist . . . He’s Washington's chronicler in chief' Nick Bryant, BBC
'Horribly fascinating. Strongly recommended. If you can bear it' Richard Dawkins
'He is the master and I'd trust him over politicians of either party any day of the week' New York Times
'Woodward is truth’s gold standard' Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a compulsively readable narrative "drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand participants and witnesses," Washington Post associate editor Woodward contends that members of the Trump administration took steps to "intentionally block some of what they believed were the president's most dangerous impulses." Woodward deems those actions "no less than an administrative coup d'etat." In the most dramatic example, Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic advisor, removed a draft letter from the Oval Office that terminated a free trade agreement with South Korea, which constituted, in Cohn's view, "a potential trigger to a national security catastrophe." As Cohn had hoped, Trump "never noticed the missing letter." Woodward also offers other sensational anecdotes unrelated to his administrative coup theme such as an argument between chief of staff John Kelly and the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement union that was so heated that Trump later said he thought the two were going to get into a fistfight as well as the occasional positive comment, such as those about the First Couple's affection for each other, and Trump's newspaper-reading habits. He ends with another sensational claim: that John Dowd, Trump's lawyer for the special counsel Russia investigation, told Trump that he would end up behind bars if he agreed to be interviewed by the special counsel, and considered Trump "a fucking liar." Woodward's reporting, with its heavy reliance on "multiple deep background interviews with firsthand sources" who remain anonymous, will be problematic for some, especially those not already inclined to believe the worst about the president. But readers who trust the reporting will find this to be both entertaining and disturbing reading.
Customer Reviews
Although an avid news reader, this is my first political book
So why haven’t I read other high-profile books, by people “on the inside”? Precisely for that reason: they’re too close to the action; too likely to have biases, either for or against the subject.
Bob Woodward is different. He’s not on the inside - but has so many inside contacts that you know he knows who to talk to. And he has decades of integrity, so you know that he won’t write something unless he firmly believes it is true - and verified.
And this book proves it. It presents the facts, from all sides, without making judgements. Through a series of vignettes, covering at least ten years of history in various significant people’s lives, he provides minute details that must have come from those same people. Their conversations, their thoughts, their beliefs: it is a fascinating look behind the usually superficial stories that hit the headlines and our screens with little background.
As well as the events, Woodward also reveals the personalities of many of the key players. Most are driven, with definite unswayable beliefs and huge energy to influence others to their views - counterpointed by Trump, who seems to have only one belief: money. Where money isn’t involved, he seems to have no resolute motivations, and can easily be convinced to a point of view - and then vacillate when the next advisor offers a different one.
Yet Woodward portrays Trump to be a more complex personality than I suspected. More human: “That’s pretty cold,” he said, referring to a horrific proposal made by Senator Lindsay Graham. More open to discussion: as long as it isn’t one of his “third rails” (immigration or the press). And much more conniving...
But the main thesis of this book, already made clear before its release, is that we as outsiders need to be worried about what is happening inside the White House. Whether you believe the problem is Trump’s volatility, or that his “support” staff are undemocratic, the problem truly exists. Bob Woodward has brought it out into the open. Now: what are we going to do about it?
Inconclusive
Spoiler: Turns out, Trump is innocent. It’s the staff who are all crooks.
Fear by Bob Woodward
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