However, there is not much discussion of his personal life that is not viewed negatively, nor are there any positive discussion of successes as a businessman or as the president. The language used by Mr Sopel corresponds to what a diary should look like, but still providing in-depth analysis about Trump’s blunders that led to his eventual demise, why Biden won despite the fact that he was labelled ‘sleepy Joe’ not by few, and the turn of tides of the election that bring more favourable outcomes to the Dems in November.

When people say ’you couldn’t make this sh*t up’ you think, ‘yup, I get what you’re saying but actually, really, you probably could…’ But when it comes to the story of the 2020 US Presential campaign, from the initial candidate nominations right through to the storming of the US Capital in Washington by an armed mob of Trump supporters in January 2021, set against the backdrop of the Covid 19 pandemic, you have to accept that even if you did make it up, absolutely no-one would believe you. A bonus of this political masterpiece is the record of America’s own response to COVID and an impartial summary of how the White House often struggled to respond to this global assault. Any vaguely conscious American can understand George Floyd’s death not just as an event that happened but as something happening again and again.That meant that this served as a good reminder for me of the timeline of events and the full catalogue of outrages committed by Trump and his cronies. Her book successfully utilizes 347 endnotes from video interviews, audio recordings, articles, public records, and books to synthesize a compelling narrative about this time in our history and Donald Trump as a child, business person, reality television personality, and President of The United States of America. As Mary Tyrone puts it in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, “The past is the present, isn’t it?

Today I have another non-fiction guest review from my OH who has either read/listened to the audio of all 3 books by Jon Sopel and has provided a review of the third book UnPresidented.He is also able to give a lot more inside information from off-the-record conversations which make the picture all the richer (and often, all the more horrifying). Fintan O’Toole is the Advising Editor at The New York Review, a columnist for The Irish Times, and the Leonard L. George Floyd does not, like the man who was his president, have imaginary historical heroes—Lincoln, Churchill—behind him.

This Kutuzov who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. Brockenbrough remains balanced and calm while laying out the extraordinary history of Trump's personal, business, and political life. In 1974 James Mann, a conservative southern Democrat and a member of the committee of the House of Representatives that was considering the impeachment of Nixon for his role in Watergate, explained his support for that process: “If there be no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. Having enjoyed, “If only they didn’t speak English,” by Jon Sopel, I was keen to read his latest book (I need to go back and read, “A Year at the Circus: Inside Trump’s White House” and intend to do so).I have always found his reporting for the BBC interesting and penetrating and the book has the same qualities, but magnified rather because he is less restrained by the requirements of impartiality. Brett bringing jet fuel and Reagan saying it can't melt anything, is a reference to a 9/11 conspiracy theory. It is striking that the US currently has a president who, so far as we know, has never even read the constitutional amendments (the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth) that emerged from the Civil War. In addition, I’d enjoyed Sopel’s 2017 book If Only They Didn’t Speak English: Notes from Trump’s America, so sourcing a copy of this one was really a complete no-brainer.

My overall impression of this compressed version of the campaign is that of refreshed amazement at just how much happened in the course of ten months, and also just how bizarre the whole thing was. This is a full and complete biography of the sitting President that uses facts, and his own words and actions to paint a portrait of his character. Travelling to and from America also highlights his apparent importance to America’s national interests . Although a book like this could be over edited benefitting with hindsight, the beauty of this book is that it was written very much in real time.

It’s a fascinating story, beginning with a hard luck immigration tale, and filled with bold and brassy business tactics, and a family that just doesn’t seem to believe the rules apply to them. I didn't even need to finish the damn thing to know its a hatchet job, and all you fucks giving it five stars can sit on my face! I learned a lot from the early life and real estate sections - the second half of the book became more of a skim for me. To see her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at ME an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me-- this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence that could make me quail. Sopel has not interviewed Trump, but his network of “sources” gets you as close as most journalists will ever get.