Reviews for Fire And Fury
by Michael Wolff
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
This much-discussed take on the Trump presidency reads like a cross between The Emperor's New Clothes and The Twilight Zone. The commentary from the ever-giddy talking heads on the excerpts that have appeared in the last several days has focused on the juicy tidbits (and, really, they're all juicy) concerning what the palace guard really thinks of Donald Trump, but there is also context here for the dysfunction and infighting that have made the president's first year so rocky. That said, there are plenty of warning signs about the book's sourcing. First and foremost, author Wolff gives a rather convoluted description of how he researched the book. Yes, he did interviews, but he also includes second-hand stories; sometimes, Wolff says, there was no way to verify accounts, so he leaves it to the reader to decide what's true. Yet the text is mostly written in an omnipresent voice, so it's difficult to determine what you're reading material from interviews or second-hand sources or pure speculation from moment to moment. In other words, a middle-grade nonfiction book typically has clearer sourcing. At the same time, while the book may have a truthiness feel about it, many commentators have come forward to say that what Wolff says stacks up with what White House observers have been reporting. Among the most telling information is that the administration felt expertise, that liberal virtue, was overrated. As shown throughout, the president, believes most of all in his gut instincts, no matter what the facts say. It is also fascinating learn about how three factions Steve Bannon, Ivanka and Jared, and Reince Priebus fought, often with each other, to move the president and his polices in the direction each wanted. Alternatively, in ways both funny and frightening, this account does reveal a distressing level of dysfunction, starting with Wolff's ability to sit on a couch in the White House for months without someone kicking him out. Fake news or genuine exposé, this will have people talking for a long time or until the next presidential tweet.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2018 Booklist
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
This much-discussed take on the Trump presidency reads like a cross between The Emperor's New Clothes and The Twilight Zone. The commentary from the ever-giddy talking heads on the excerpts that have appeared in the last several days has focused on the juicy tidbits (and, really, they're all juicy) concerning what the palace guard really thinks of Donald Trump, but there is also context here for the dysfunction and infighting that have made the president's first year so rocky. That said, there are plenty of warning signs about the book's sourcing. First and foremost, author Wolff gives a rather convoluted description of how he researched the book. Yes, he did interviews, but he also includes second-hand stories; sometimes, Wolff says, there was no way to verify accounts, so he leaves it to the reader to decide what's true. Yet the text is mostly written in an omnipresent voice, so it's difficult to determine what you're reading material from interviews or second-hand sources or pure speculation from moment to moment. In other words, a middle-grade nonfiction book typically has clearer sourcing. At the same time, while the book may have a truthiness feel about it, many commentators have come forward to say that what Wolff says stacks up with what White House observers have been reporting. Among the most telling information is that the administration felt expertise, that liberal virtue, was overrated. As shown throughout, the president, believes most of all in his gut instincts, no matter what the facts say. It is also fascinating learn about how three factions Steve Bannon, Ivanka and Jared, and Reince Priebus fought, often with each other, to move the president and his polices in the direction each wanted. Alternatively, in ways both funny and frightening, this account does reveal a distressing level of dysfunction, starting with Wolff's ability to sit on a couch in the White House for months without someone kicking him out. Fake news or genuine exposé, this will have people talking for a long time or until the next presidential tweet.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2018 Booklist
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Headline-grabbing fly-on-the-wall view of the dysfunctional playroom that is the Trump White House."What is this white trash'?" asks a fashion model of Donald Trump. He replies, "They're people just like me, only they're poor." There's a certain Snopes-comes-to-the-big-city feel to celebrity journalist Wolff's (Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age, 2015, etc.) tawdry portrait of the current occupants of the White House, which, writes the author, is based on conversations with the president and his senior staff and backed by hundreds of hours of recordings. Given the many competing fiefdoms in the West Wing, Wolff adds, no one wholly endorsed his access ("the president himself encouraged this idea," he says), but no one quite said no, either. The results are damning, those competing fiefdoms not just jealous of their turf, but also vicious in their characterizations of the other side. Most aggressively nasty, by the author's account, is former assistant Steve Bannon, who describes Trump as "a simple machine" with a binary of flattery and calumny, while he declares that "I am the leader of the national-populist movement" and suggests that Trumpism can do fine without its namesakewho, he adds, will not be around for a second term. Wolff has plenty of sting himself. Of one-time intern-turned-power broker Stephen Miller, he sneers, "he was supposed to be the house intellectual but was militantly unread," while he suggests that the dumb-as-a-brick (Bannon's characterization) Ivanka's relationship with her father is purely transactional: "It was business. Building the brand, the presidential campaign, and now the White Houseit was all business." No one in the administration seems up to the job he or she is supposed to be doing, and there's an ugly, startling instance of incompetence on every page.The White House has naturally denied and decried Wolff's account, but even if it's only halfway accurate, it presents an appalling view of a frighteningly unqualified and unprepared gang that can't think straight. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
