18-05-2025
The best books on Donald Trump
From rebuking national leaders for not wearing suits to receiving letters that made him fall in love with one of the world's most autocratic leaders to claiming to have negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan over the 'centuries old' dispute over Kashmir, Donald Trump has done it all in a short span of time into his second term. The 45th and 47th (and he insists he was the 46th one as well) President of the United States of America is seldom far from the spotlight. Here are some books that offer a glimpse into the most powerful man in the world:
Those who want to know how Donald Trump works in the White House will be caught between two trilogies — the highly controversial Fire and Fury (which Trump tried to stop from being published), Siege and Landslide, by Michael Wolff; and Fear, Rage and Peril by the legendary Bob Woodward, who was part of the Woodward-Bernstein team whose All the President's Men brought down the Nixon administration. We will keep it simple: while Wolff's work covers a lot of Trump's personal life and is likely to shock you more deeply, Woodward's work is more organised and objective, although it too does not portray Trump in a flattering light (if that were indeed possible).
What's more, Woodward's style of writing revolves around conversations which he writes in direct speech, which makes his books much easier to read. The books actually read like a blend between a Tom Clancy thriller and Ripley's Believe It or Not – Fear actually begins with Trump's associates actually hiding a document from the US President to ensure that he does not sign it (it would have ended the special treaty between US and its ally South Korea if he had!), Rage revolves around Trump's (mis)handling of the COVID situation, his impending impeachment and yes, you get references to the letters sent by North Korea's Kim Jong Un. 'I got a very beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un yesterday,' Trump tells reporters, adding 'I would love to give it to you. I really would. Maybe – maybe sometime I will.' Peril, the final instalment of the trilogy (co authored by Robert Costa), covers the final days of Trump's first administration, including his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and also covers Joe Biden's campaign. These are all big books, spanning well over 400 pages each, but you will race through them, with a sense of shock and awe!
Unlike Wolff, Woodward does not look too closely at Trump's domestic life, but his style of narration leaves us with a very carefully etched image of the President, often in his own words. One can even read the interviews with Trump on which Woodward based his book in The Trump Tapes. Knowing Woodward, we are reasonably sure that he will be writing more books on Trump, but at this time, if you want to read a book on Trump's surprising re-election, Michael Wolff's All or Nothing is easily the best option. Its revelations about Trump's strained relationship with Melania Trump have already stirred controversy and White House Communications Director Michael Cheung has denounced Wolff as a 'lying bag of s**'. We are not surprised.
A honorable mention also needs to be made of The Divider by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, which covers Trump's first term in office in almost alarming detail, even narrating how his hair is arranged (a 'three-step process') and cemented with TRESemme' TRES TWO hair spray (extra hold), a can of which is carried by an aide everywhere the President goes. One also gets to know his obsession with getting photographed at eye-level and why he loves holding conferences outdoors!
If you want to know the complete Donald Trump story from the very beginning, then you will have to choose between two meticulously researched books: Lucky Loser by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, and Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman. If we had to pick one, we would go with Confidence Man, in which Haberman dismantles the Trump myth, beginning from his claim of how he realised 'I don't want to be made anybody's sucker' when he saw an engineer not being given credit for building a bridge during its inauguration on a day when 'the rain was coming down for hours'. Haberman points out that not only did the engineer get a round of applause from the crowd, but that it was also a sunny day. As the book traces Trump's rise, Haberman literally unravels the mythos Trump has built around himself, revealing a person who is prone to act at the spur of the moment, frequently (sometimes fortunately) forgets things and is utterly obsessed with himself and the spotlight, generally both together.
He even wanted to be a Hollywood star. Whereas Wolff and Woodward's work show Trump in an often-brutal, narcissistic light, Haberman reveals that Trump was capable of being utterly charming, and often surprised first time visitors to the White House with his humour and concern. 'The all-capitalized tweets that projected anger were sometimes sent while he was laughing about the same topic,' she writes. Confidence Man's detailed and objective narration makes it the perfect book to read about Trump, although you do not get the intensity of Trump in the White House that Woodward's trilogy delivers. Lucky Loser is a good read too, but we think Haberman tells the better story.
Has any world leader used Twitter as effectively as Donald Trump? The US President has used the social network to announce major decisions (including the recent ceasefire between India and Pakistan) and to rain invective on his enemies and rivals. And yet he was not always like this. Peter Oborne traces Trump's Twitter journey in How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language, starting with his first tweet on 4 May, 2009, announcing that he would be appearing on the David Letterman show to his bombastic use of the medium to get this message through as he raced to the White House, analysing key tweets in detail. Unfortunately, the book ends in 2017, well before Musk took over Twitter and also emerged as Trump's biggest ally. We would all love an update of this one, but in the meantime, this is still a must-read for all those interested in communication strategy and of course, in Donald Trump.
