“This is the book Trump fears most.” - Axios
“Will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.” - Joe Klein, The New York Times
"A uniquely illuminating portrait." - Sean Wilentz, The Washington Post
“[A] monumental look at Donald Trump and his presidency.” — David Shribman, Los Angeles Times
From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump's presidency like no other journalist, Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency.
Few journalists working today have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few understand him and his motivations better. Now, demonstrating her majestic command of this story, Haberman reveals in full the depth of her understanding of the 45th president himself, and of what the Trump phenomenon means.
Interviews with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture, galvanizing support for a run for high office that he began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago, to ultimately become a president who pushed American democracy to the brink.
The through-line of Trump’s life and his presidency is the enduring question of what is in it for him or what he needs to say to survive short increments of time in the pursuit of his own interests.
Confidence Man is also, inevitably, about the world that produced such a singular character, giving rise to his career and becoming his first stage. It is also about a series of relentlessly transactional relationships. The ones that shaped him most were with girlfriends and wives, with Roy Cohn, with George Steinbrenner, with Mike Tyson and Don King and Roger Stone, with city and state politicians like Robert Morgenthau and Rudy Giuliani, with business partners, with prosecutors, with the media, and with the employees who toiled inside what they commonly called amongst themselves the “Trump Disorganization.”
That world informed the one that Trump tried to recreate while in the White House. All of Trump’s behavior as President had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and newsmaking book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.
“This is the book Trump fears most.” - Axios
“Will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.” - Joe Klein, The New York Times
"A uniquely illuminating portrait." - Sean Wilentz, The Washington Post
“[A] monumental look at Donald Trump and his presidency.” — David Shribman, Los Angeles Times
From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump's presidency like no other journalist, Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency.
Few journalists working today have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few understand him and his motivations better. Now, demonstrating her majestic command of this story, Haberman reveals in full the depth of her understanding of the 45th president himself, and of what the Trump phenomenon means.
Interviews with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture, galvanizing support for a run for high office that he began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago, to ultimately become a president who pushed American democracy to the brink.
The through-line of Trump’s life and his presidency is the enduring question of what is in it for him or what he needs to say to survive short increments of time in the pursuit of his own interests.
Confidence Man is also, inevitably, about the world that produced such a singular character, giving rise to his career and becoming his first stage. It is also about a series of relentlessly transactional relationships. The ones that shaped him most were with girlfriends and wives, with Roy Cohn, with George Steinbrenner, with Mike Tyson and Don King and Roger Stone, with city and state politicians like Robert Morgenthau and Rudy Giuliani, with business partners, with prosecutors, with the media, and with the employees who toiled inside what they commonly called amongst themselves the “Trump Disorganization.”
That world informed the one that Trump tried to recreate while in the White House. All of Trump’s behavior as President had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and newsmaking book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.
Reviews-
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May 1, 2022
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.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from October 24, 2022
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. -
November 1, 2022
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(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
