Name: Fire and Fury
ISBN: 9781432852054

Michael Wolff

Inside the Trump White House

Fire and Fury

#1 New York Times Bestseller With extraordinary access to the West Wing, Michael Wolff reveals what happened behind-the-scenes in the first nine months of the most controversial presidency of our time in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the country—and the world—has witnessed a stormy, outrageous, and absolutely mesmerizing presidential term that reflects the volatility and fierceness of the man elected Commander-in-Chief. This riveting and explosive account of Trump’s administration provides a wealth of new details about the chaos in the Oval Office, including: -- What President Trump’s staff really thinks of him -- What inspired Trump to claim he was wire-tapped by President Obama -- Why FBI director James Comey was really fired -- Why chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner couldn’t be in the same room -- Who is really directing the Trump administration’s strategy in the wake of Bannon’s firing -- What the secret to communicating with Trump is -- What the Trump administration has in common with the movie The Producers Never before in history has a presidency so divided the American people. Brilliantly reported and astoundingly fresh, Fire and Fury shows us how and why Donald Trump has become the king of discord and disunion. “Essential reading.”—Michael D’Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, CNN.com “Not since Harry Potter has a new book caught fire in this way...[Fire and Fury] is indeed a significant achievement, which deserves much of the attention it has received.”—The Economist

Patrick Book

Couldn’t put it down. So interesting to see the practical, tangible rift between the campaign/transition team and the professional political team/civil servants that actually make success possible in office.

Eric Smith

The facts may be somewhat suspect but the entertainment is real!

Carol Bailey

Normally I would not have picked this book up. Obviously, I did because "He doth protest to much." So, the book: it's what I imagine it would be like to read one of those magazines you see next to the cash register with the salacious headlines, minus the alien baby. Sort of.
The truth is I read sections and ignored a bunch of typos/editing issues. Then I started skipping sections because like so much to do with the current state of politics, I couldn't stand one more minute.

Originally, I gave it 1 star but I didn't want to kill myself while I was reading it and it was EXACTLY what I anticipated so I switched it to a 2

Shay Henrion

Started out strong but then was kind of tired and boring and not very salacious by the end. Also, dude, use less clauses in your writing. A sentence shouldn’t be a whole paragraph.

Fadi

تذكرني نوعية هذه الكتب بجريدة يعرفها السوريون جيدا ًوهي [ سالب موجب ] كانت هذه الجريدة تصدرُ كل يوم سبت وتعنى بالجرائم المختلفة التي تقع في مختلف المحافظات السورية، وتوزع في محطات السفر [ البولمان ] وعند باعة التبغ وفي الأسواق 
المهم.. من يقرأ هذه الجريدة كان يظنّ أنّ الجرائم هي الحالة الطبيعية للبلد
والحقّ أنّ كثير من هذه الجرائم لم تكن كاذبة ولكن التحرير القائم على مبدأ التشويق والعناوين الجذابة يغري بالمتابعة .
في كتاب [ النار والغضب ] والذي علمتُ أنّه مقطع مأخوذ من الكتاب المقدس يأخذنا المؤلف في رحلة على كواليس عالم ترامب منذ تحضيره للانتخابات إلى وصوله لسدة الحكم وحتى يومنا هذا
الكتاب كله قائم على مبدأ الصحافة الصفراء والأمور الغريبة للمشاهير
لم أخرج من الكتاب بشيء سوى تعرفي على ستيف بانون [ الشخصية السحرية ] وعلاقتها مع ترامب 
أما باقي تقاصيل الكتاب فكلها تافهة وغير مهمة 
أو على أقل تقدير يمكن أن تجدها في أي موقع فضائحي متابع للشأن الأمريكي

Mariane Ferrantino 

LORD I FINALLY FINISHED THIS TRASH. That is all.

Caroline Lewicki

Ugh. I was so slugged down by this book, both in reading it and thinking about its contents. It's so hard to write a review for this. 

Is it well written? Meh. It was certainly and obviously rushed to publication.

Is it salacious? Sure, but that's not surprising.

Does it provide hope or understanding for our current global climate? No, and this is where I struggled. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Is our country (and quite possibly the world) becoming a hot dumpster fire? I can't say for sure and I don't know that any author could quite articulate that sense of hope. I struggled throughout this book wondering, "Why write this?" Everything is fake news this, and fake news that. Everyone believes whatever they want anyway, so believe this if you will or discredit it if you choose. 

Now on to a read that doesn't make me want to pound my face into my steering wheel and shout into the void :))))

This book took at least 15 off of my life but it was an essential and timely read so well done

Lisa Miller

Absolutely riveting. I more or less keep adrift of the Trump presidency (how can one not?) but I don't live in the States so I don't get the constant deluge and it was helpful/entertaining to get a condensed snapshot of the first 6 months. Interesting to see how the rest will play out huh?

Kaycee Castleman

Most of this we already knew about. Other bits of this it's a wonder how legitimate this all is. It's a fun read but ehh I would take a bunch with a grain of salt.

Sophie Shrimpton

Gossipy drivel perfect after a day of actually thinking. I chose this because I had a particularly intellectually testing week of research/mooting and wanted something that I was curious about but would not challenge me. This was ideal. I don't trust Michael Wolff in the slightest - I'm not too sure how he can tell what people are thinking and am pretty sure he is stretching the bounds of journo ethics. Regardless, the caricatures he created were entertaining and, I'm sure, near enough the truth to provide some insight. It's still astonishing to me that someone like Trump could bullshit his way into the presidency. 

Audiobook 'read'.

Some interesting things:
Trump thought he would lose 2016 election and planned to claim it was stolen to save face. Looks like he dusted off the same books for the 2020 election.

I liked the idea of Trump as performance. He is a mere character, to himself and to others. He is an empty man whose strings are pulled in all directions. 

Bannon (alt-right), Kushner (Goldman Sachs Democrat) and Priebus (classic republican) as all fighting for Trump's attention in beginning (through being the strategic brain, business connections and using congress to do the hard yards, respectively) 

Trump believed one man could be bigger than the system. He assumed political institutions were responsive to him and yearned to meet the market. But the judiciary, congress, executive, media etc are not eager to adapt - by their nature they are determined to endure.

Adam

What can I say about this book that hasn't already been covered the media? Between opening the doors to a journalist (Wolff) and then treating him like a confident, it's no surprise what happened: the truth got out.

There have been a number of stories that haven't been shared as widely as others from this book that still stuck with me:

• When alone with a colleagues wife that Trump wanted to sleep with, he called her husband on speakerphone and got him to admit to compromising things so he could pursue her (this happened with multiple women).
• Jared Kushner is painted as the most knowledgeable person in the entire white house - or at least the one that listens to other people before making his own opinion.
• Just how much no one in the campaign wanted to win the election, and that everything they did was to make it seem like less of a blowout so they could all move on to better jobs after the loss.

Rachel

Fire & Fury isn't telling us anything major we don't know. Trump and his staff are a never ending shit show. Sure we get some new details that are disturbing, but not surprising. I was looking forward to this book because of the media storm and how much Trump wanted to prevent this from coming out. Then I started listening to it and saw Michael Wolff in a interview, while I do not doubt all the things in this book are capable of happening and probably did, when he was pushed to provide some kind of proof and to talk more about his process and resources, he kinda lost his cool. He should of provided better background information on himself, his resources, and when possible provide some proof and substantial facts to his claims.

Ilia Markov

Good read if you haven't been reading the news over the last year.

Mostly a re-telling of what's going on inside the White House (most of the things we already knew from Mr. Orange's tweets). 

I was expecting a bit more by way of analysis. It hints on this at the end when discussing Bannon's dismissal, but doesn't go very deep.

Bryan Alexander

Fire and Fury is one of the first Trump administration books out of the gate. It covers most of Trump's first year, starting with the 2016 election win and ending in fall 2017. It reads like journalism, with its combination of insider interviews and leaks with hot takes on current or recent events. 

One theme is Trump's shambolic career. Throughout the book it's clear that he's fiercely ignorant, deeeply indecisive, petulant, and needy. He tramples over staff who, in turn, scheme frantically to survive while backstabbing each other. I'm reminded of similar historical accounts of people who ascend to executive positions far beyond their grasp, from medieval aristocracy to Roman emperors.

The other main theme is that story of staff knifing each other. Throughout Fire and Fury factions form and feud. Players enter the stage, struggle for influence, and sometimes exit in flames. This part of the book reads like a soap opera or American high school story, with cliques, plots, screaming fights, and audacious pettiness.

Is the book useful? Much of what it describes has been in the news, especially as so many players have leaked so energetically, and Trump famously has no filter. The infighting accounts are useful, especially the saga of Kushner and Ivanka trying to rule the show.

I appreciate its focus on the tv world. This is so central to the Trump story, both personally as well as a source of his success. And Wolff, while attentive to players, distances himself from the glitz. He's not a tv critic, but I appreciate his willingness to focus on tv, and not in an attitude of admiration.Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate... Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate—total television” (185)

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is Wolff's attempt to make up Trumpism and Bannonism. He tries to cast Trump as the head of a movement, but it falls flat, as Wolff also shows Trump flailing most of the time. the president, while proposing the most radical departure from governing and policy norms in several generations, had few specific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy, nor a team that could reasonably unite behind him. (184)
 In the book Trump never establishes a mass movement, partly because the narrative usually remains within the administration; there's no sign of a GOP following, but only of Republicans maneuvering for advantage. Instead "Trumpism" is a failed attempt to dress up a character for history. Wolff is more successful in just sketching Trump as a person.While Trump was in most ways a conventional misogynist, in the workplace he was much closer to women than to men. The former he confided in, the latter he held at arm’s length. He liked and needed his office wives, and he trusted them with his most important personal issues. Women, according to Trump, were simply more loyal and trustworthy than men. Men might “be more forceful and competent, but they were also more likely to have their own agendas. Women, by their nature, or Trump’s version of their nature, were more likely to focus their purpose on a man. A man like Trump. (313)

Bannonism is ultimately the book's focus. It seems that Bannon is Wolff's primary source, and the book spends a great deal of time talking through his impressions and ideas. Wolff portrays Bannon as an activist and leader, a thinker and strategist. I don't know Wolff's politics, but this account reminds me of Democrats who see Trump as heralding an extreme right resurgence, who see Nazis as a threat. The book is fascinated by Bannon, concluding by seeing him as a kind of global right wing leader.

Wolff's style is accessible and occasionally puckish. I enjoyed some turns of phrase: Insult trauma radiated out of the Oval Office. You could hear it when passing by. (374
By the end of the first month in the White House, Bannon and Kushner had each built a network of primary outlets, as well as secondary ones to deflect from the obviousness of the primary ones, creating a White House that simultaneously displayed extreme animosity toward the press and yet great willingness to leak to it. In this, at least, Trump’s administration was achieving a landmark transparency. (195) 
Recommended as one historical document among many.

Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House