Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Ratings113
Average rating3.5
To quote Sean Spicer, aka Spicey, “You can't make this shit up.” Fire and Fury is funny, dishy, and almost unbelievable–and yet. However, Wolff often tries to cram too many ideas into one sentence, sacrificing clarity for sensationalism. I agree partly with other reviewers who say that there's little here that most people don't already know, or couldn't hear about elsewhere. I also often questioned how in the world Wolff was privy to certain statements or conversations. For instance, how in the world did he overheard Ivanka walking down the steps on her cell phone, saying, “I know it's a mess, we're trying to fix it”? There are statements made in here that someone like me, a researcher and a cynic, would want to double-check, but there aren't any footnotes in the book.
Wolff is also clearly awed by Steve Bannon, who arguably acts as the subject of this book more than Trump does. The book is subtitled Inside the Trump White House, meaning that it is more about the staff than The Donald. Wolff mostly focuses on Bannon's relationship with Jarvanka, Jarvanka's relationship with Bannon, and any other combination. Trump is treated like the elephant in the room, like something that has already occurred despite everyone's best efforts and must now be managed as discreetly as possible.
Overall, I started out with the book feeling like I was being let in on a juicy secret, but more than halfway through, it got stale and hard to follow. Take this review for what it is, though; I'd wager that those of you who are reading it either have already read the book, or have no plans to do so.
Curiosity about the Trump White House alone is not enough momentum to finish this book. You also need pure madness. This story is as crazy, depraved, and depressing as you expect–expect laughs from the sheer absurdity of it all. Good writing and narration, though.
Despite the media furor that this book caused, the content of the book, much like the inner workings of the White House are quite disappointing. Many facts can easily be disproven, not enough journalism is performed by the journalist that wrong the book.
It's not surprising how quickly we've moved past the relevancy of this book.
It took me a while to get my hands on this one - I was watching the scandal around its release, and laughed my butt off when the publisher scorned Trump's threats and published it early instead. My copy finally came in at the library, and I've been reading it off and on for the last couple of weeks. I normally read books far faster than that, and it's not a long book, but I kept having to set it aside for numerous reasons.
It could have benefited from more thorough editing - between a couple of typos, some odd grammar, and a phrase being repeated twice in the same sentence (I think the sentence may have originally been broken across two pages, so no one realized, and then in the final formatting it was all together) - it definitely had some technical problems.
It was also just infuriating. Especially the beginning, where so many of the campaign staffers don't think Trump SHOULD be president, but still campaign for him because it's impossible that he could win, so what does it matter if they don't think he should? That was incredibly frustrating to read.
Honestly there wasn't a lot in this book that I didn't already know, but I've been following politics pretty closely since early 2016. If you haven't, and you're looking for a good way to get up to date on current American politics, this could be a pretty good place to start. (Don't stop at this book, though, there's a lot that it doesn't cover.)
I can't say that anything really surprised me. Everything sounds like what I've come to expect from this administration. The book is decent, but anything terribly salacious from it has been pulled out and splashed across the news at this point, so if you've been paying attention, I don't actually think it's worth spending your time on. It's certainly not the groundbreaking INSIDE LOOK THAT NO ONE'S SEEN HURRY AND READ IT that it was advertised as.
You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.
Interesting enough. I admit it feeds into my perceptions of Trump, but if even half of this is true, it's insane.
Fact check of it: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jan/09/fact-checking-read-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff/ (Some of the inaccuracies could probably be chalked up to the rushed publication, others not so much.)
Nothing earth-shattering here, but it was fun to read about the Trump administration's dysfunction and constant in-fighting. The book is well written and very readable. Trump says it's all a lie, but it sure SOUNDS true. (It seems appropriate that I finished the book while Trump is at this moment delivering his State of the Union Address to which I am not listening.)
Full review here: https://vicsense.wordpress.com/2018/01/25/fire-and-fury/
First of all, I'd like to point out the obvious: look at that gorgeous cover. I mean, that's a New York Times worthy picture if I've ever seen one. Not going to lie, the cover makes the book all the more appealing.
Going into this one, I thought I'd be reading about how Trump is an imbecile who can't form a correct sentence and doesn't know his left from is right... What I got instead, was a whole lot of pages dedicated to other people in the Trump orbit, mostly Steve Bannon. I felt that the book was more preoccupied with people around Trump, rather than Trump himself. Of course, there were moments when Wolff pointed out real gems from Trump's history with Twitter and on the campaign trail.
It was all rather ‘meh'. Too ordinary to care.
Reading Challenge category: a book with the letter Y in the title
This book needed a better editor. I found so many typos, grammar errors, and mistakes that it distracted from my reading. Overall this book was interesting, although I think the author presents some things as fact that are actually someone's opinion. I enjoyed the gossipy style.
If even a tenth of this book is true it's astonishing how the White House even functions at all.
If you are reading this huddled around a candle in your fallout shelter, then I guess it was all for real and the story didn't have the happy ending we all hoped for.
So frightening it makes Richard Preston's books on Ebola feel like fairy tales.
I wasn't at all interested in this until there was such a hoopla surrounding the release, so of course I had to jump on the bandwagon. Honestly, there isn't anything in the book that is new or surprising, but it does make quite clear just how incompetent our nation's leaders are at present. Reading it directly after reading Washington's Farewell also puts the actions of our current president in rather harsh perspective.
I got to about 19% of the way in and realized I don't need to read this. The author even says not everything is 100% factual and I don't need to read a book that possibly sensationalizes Trump or anyone around him. These people are evil all on their own. There's no reason to exaggerate except to possibly cause a stir and make more money.
Accept it for what it is.... A gossipy, tabloidish, and often slapdash account, albeit one with a lot of access to Trumps White house and senior staff. Its a fun read but it's main utility is to enable an open discussion of stuff that more serious reporters have known for ages but have not been able to attribute to specific people... That Trump is a petulant, narcissistic child who nobody respects.
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.
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.
This read like a Bannon commissioned hit piece. It had salacious moments, but they were all teased out already. Major events in the first year were completely glossed over. The health care bill is only mentioned in passing. Feels like the book was wrapped before anything happened with tax reform. Pence is for all intents completely non-existent in this book. Same for Mnuchin and Mattis. Spicer isn't even that large a figure. Sarah Huckabee Sanders isn't even mentioned.
My guess would be that Steve Bannon had a significant hand in pushing this out. It paints Jared and Ivanka in an incredibly bad light.
The insight into Katie Walsh and Gary Cohn was interesting. I honestly didn't know too much about them.