Library Journal
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Having covered Donald Trump for many years and won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on investigations into his and his advisers' connections to Russia, New York Times reporter Haberman here assesses his rise as a calculating businessman/politician, the world that made him possible, and his impact on the U.S. body politic.

Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

This reviewer has read many presidential biographies but none like this. Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, is meticulous and professional, providing unprecedented context and detail. The closest this book comes to any other presidential biography is Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson. However, whereas Johnson was revered by most of his staff, noted for being honest, retrospective, and self-aware, Trump is despised by most people who come into contact with him. Further, Trump is never self-aware nor truthful. For these reasons, this biography is in many ways the opposite of Caro's series. In this account of Trump's path to and performance in the presidency, he is revealed as nothing but craven and malign. Haberman's book is by no means a hit piece—simply recounting Trump's actions is damning enough. If readers are to glean anything positive about former President Trump, it is that he is a brilliant self-promoter. However, although unalloyed self-promotion is fine, even essential in business, it is devastating in the presidency. What makes this book all the more important is that the final chapter has yet to be written. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Daniel P. Franklin, emeritus, Georgia State University

Publishers Weekly
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Like a tsunami traveling hundreds of miles before it crashes onshore, the shock of Donald Trump’s election and polarizing presidency was less sudden than it first appeared, according to this sprawling account from Pulitzer winner Haberman. Drawing on decades spent covering Trump, Haberman is especially insightful on how his combative instincts and transactional worldview were forged in the cauldron of New York City’s racialized politics and cutthroat real estate market. She documents tussles and quid pro quos with city officials over the Commodore Hotel and the West Side rail yards, and cites a source’s claim that Rudy Giuliani, then serving as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, dropped an investigation into money laundering at Trump Tower because he wanted Trump’s support in the 1989 mayoral election. (After he lost, Giuliani made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud: “They stole votes in the Black parts of Brooklyn, and in Washington Heights”). Haberman also shares findings from a 1988 poll commissioned by Roger Stone to sell Trump on “a future in national politics”; recounts White House rivalries (“Did you see I cut Bannon’s balls off?” Jared Kushner asked one visitor); and reveals that administration health officials believed Trump would have died from Covid-19 if he hadn’t received monoclonal antibodies. Deeply reported and immersively told, this is an essential contribution to the overloaded bookshelf on Trump. (Oct.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The poster child for self-absorption is revealed to be even worse than we thought. Much of what New York Times reporter Haberman tells us isn’t new, unless it’s a novel observation that Donald Trump is so in love with the sound of his own voice that he’ll say anything—including, occasionally, the truth. So it is that some newsworthy items emerge: Trump all but admitting that the documents found at Mar-a-Lago were sent there deliberately (“Most of it is in the archives, but…we have incredible things”), for instance, but also falsely insisting that on Jan. 6 he was not glued to the TV despite numerous reports to the contrary (“I was having meetings. I was also with Mark Meadows and others. I was not watching television”). It’s likely that things are going to be uncomfortable around the Thanksgiving table when his daughter and her husband read that “Trump frequently told Kelly and other aides that he was eager to see Jared and Ivanka depart the White House.” Melania might not be happy, either, to know that Trump’s greatest worry about running for president was “the women,” pointing upward to the Trump Tower penthouse and adding, “I’ll get in trouble upstairs.” The most useful part of Haberman’s lucid, justly scornful account is her linking of Trump's actions as president to his actions as a New York wheeler-dealer. He yearned to be accepted by the city’s elite and reacted in bitter anger when he wasn’t; as Al Sharpton shrewdly observed, “everything was transactional.” Repeatedly bailed out by his father and the banks, Trump was largely a failure as a businessman and, as Haberman deftly chronicles, mostly for the same reasons that he failed as a president: refusal to accept responsibility, unite contending factions, or listen to anyone but himself. A damning portrait of narcissism, megalomania, and abject failure—and the price the country is paying in the bargain. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.