Apprentice in Wonderland
How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass
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3.9 • 24 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the editor in chief of Variety and author of the New York Times bestseller Ladies Who Punch, the never-fully-told, behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump and The Apprentice, the long-running reality series that catapulted him to the White House.
Here for the first time is the definitive untold story of Donald Trump’s years as a reality TV star. Trump himself admits he might not have been president without The Apprentice. Now, just as he uncovered the chaos inside the daytime favorite The View in his bestselling Ladies Who Punch, Ramin Setoodeh chronicles Trump’s dramatic tenure as New York’s ultimate boss in the boardroom, a mirage created by Survivor producer Mark Burnett and NBC boss Jeff Zucker. With unprecedented access, including hours of interviews with Trump, his boardroom advisers George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher, Eric Trump, and some of the most memorable contestants, and writing with flair and authority, Setoodeh shares all the untold tales from this legendary show that has left its mark on popular culture, shaped the legend of its star, and ultimately changed American history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This revealing inquiry from Setoodeh (Ladies Who Punch), coeditor-in-chief of Variety, scrutinizes Trump's run as host of The Apprentice from 2004 through 2015. Setoodeh describes producer Mark Burnett's conception of the show as "Survivor set against the backdrop of corporate America," the ill-fated spin-off hosted by Martha Stewart, and the flagship program's struggle to recapture its first season's ratings success. However, the author's detailed accounts of six interviews he conducted with the former president between 2021 and 2023 arguably make this most valuable as an examination of Trump's post-presidency mindset. Trump offered to talk on the record with Setoodeh before the author had even reached out, indicating how eager Trump was to "relive his TV glory days." Other details are more expected, such as Trump's overinflation of The Apprentice's viewership. Setoodeh's evocative reporting presents the former president as the star of his own Sunset Boulevard, secluded and desperate to reclaim the spotlight ("There is something about the quiet inside Trump Tower that feels like a department store past its prime"). The author also snatches some newsworthy tidbits from Trump, most notably catching him admitting he lost the 2020 election before he immediately backtracked. While not as essential as Maggie Haberman's Confidence Man, this earns its place in the ever-expanding pantheon of Trump reports.
Customer Reviews
Excellent, as far as it goes…
A great look, almost essay style, at how the combination of tv industry and Trump’s craven need for glory and attention got him to where he is today. It’s an enjoyable read, though there are some missing pieces that bothered me.
I read Apprentice in Wonderland a couple months after listening to a podcast episode about newly revealed details about the show after NDAs of people who’d worked for it had expired. I’m kind of detail-obsessed, and some of what I heard on that podcast - including Trump’s inability to remember names of contestants or coherently say his lines until there’d been multiple takes, doesn’t appear here. I don’t know if it’s because NDAs limited what the author was told, since he doesn’t mention that anyone he talked to was constrained by them.in any case, dispute the largely unflattering picture of Trump this book gives, it comes off as more flattering than it should, that he’s a smooth tv man who can hit his mark and say his lines, rather than he needed a lot. Ire handling than that.
That podcast also makes it clear that the choice of winner on the show had to be Trump’s because of strict FCC rules, but this book is more vague about it and doesn’t mention those rules except in passing, which as a journalist myself I feel is a reporting fail.
That said, the book is good for what it is - basically a lengthy series of interviews with Trump that shows him for he who is (although more flattering than the one we really know), and how he parlayed that false TV persona into running for, and winning, the presidency.
It’s a book about the TV industry, so gets a pass on not really going into how bad a fit a man who doesn’t care about America or the office was in the role.
The author calls out many of Trump’s lies, but lets a lot of others pass without comment. Maybe he assumes his readers are savvy enough to know that Trump did not get more votes than any other candidate in history, for instance? (Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million and Biden by 7 million). I realize the book would’ve had to have been twice as long if he countered every Trump lie with the truth, so it is what it is.
I feel the author also lets comments of some of the others interviewed pass at face value without a lot of scrutiny.
The needlessly subtly misogynistic chapter about Martha Stewart also hit a false note with me. She was obviously, for reasons no one can blame her for, put in a tv role that was a bad fit, and that chapter would’ve gone down better if the author had showed a little more insight instead of taking some obvious pot shots and snark.