A powerful chronicle of uninhibited, solipsistic power exercised with few positive results.
Of malevolence, chaos, and vengeance as national policy.
New York Times political reporters Haberman and Swan examine the profound differences between the first and second Trump presidencies, suggesting that present excesses might have been avoided “if he had served a consecutive second term”—for, absent his years in the wilderness plotting retribution, “he would never have accumulated the power he now wielded.” President Trump now surrounds himself with heavily vetted loyalists; even before he took office anew, “officials on the Trump transition team had already searched candidates’ social media accounts for any criticisms of Trump after the riot at the Capitol.” And the authors argue that competence comes second to appearance, as with his choice of a onetime Texas lawmaker to head the CIA: “He’s straight out of central casting.” Thus Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Karoline Leavitt, and others, with some quickly discarded when the optics go bad—“I don’t know why I picked her,” Trump says of former Attorney General Pam Bondi. The news in this newsworthy book, based on more than 1,000 interviews with people “close to President Trump” (including one with Trump himself), is sometimes trivial—Trump leaves a mess wherever he eats, for one tidbit, and staff have to check the trash to make sure he hasn’t thrown out sterling silver utensils. More often, it speaks to Trump’s driving obsessions, among them how best to play to the camera, as when he and JD Vance tag-team to upbraid Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a confrontation that Trump characteristically called “better than The Apprentice.” Interestingly, the authors note several instances in which Trump treats Vance dismissively, with the hint that Marco Rubio might well emerge as Trump’s anointed successor in 2028. All in all, they write, Trump “lived in a bubble, shuttling between his private clubs and the White House, and he was rarely shown anything but good news,” even as he regularly—and apparently willfully—creates bad news all on his own.
A powerful chronicle of uninhibited, solipsistic power exercised with few positive results.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668067246
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.
Tired of the lies about the 2020 election? Buckle up: Trump is just warming up, and his allies may be getting craftier.
“This is not a book about January 6, 2021. It is a book about January 6, 2025,” write legal scholars Lessig and Seligman. We are lucky, Lessig suggests, that John Eastman and his fellow plotters “picked the dumbest possible strategy for pursuing what we feared they were trying to accomplish”: namely, trying to convince Mike Pence that he had the constitutional authority to refuse to certify the results by which Joe Biden won the presidency. One might argue that the second dumbest strategy was to send an army of fascist goons to the Capitol to try to enforce Eastman’s argument. However, Lessig and Seligman argue, there are holes in the Constitution wide enough to drive a burning dumpster through, and they might allow an interested party to falsely claim victory in a closely contested race and win the election. The authors presume that any such gaming-the-system effort will come from MAGA Republicans, though they add that a Democrat could easily use the same tactics. Readers may need a law degree to follow some of the arguments, but others are quite accessible. One argument that Lessig has been mounting for some time, for instance, is that the winner-take-all method employed by most states for electoral votes needs to be replaced with an apportionment system so that the Electoral College count will align with the popular vote. On that score, the authors warn, the prospect of rogue electors—or more, rogue governors who control those electors—is very real, and numerous other threats could enable someone smarter than the last bunch to mount “a cataclysmic attack on our democracy.”
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780300270792
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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