I think Woodward did an excellent job of going behind-the-scenes and setting the stage for the players in the Trump administration. I got a better idea of the advisors and senior staff who had to work with the President daily and the struggles both sides had to contend with. Woodward's years of journalism are clear in this book as he simply lays things out as they are, uses quotes from 17 interviews with Trump as well as other interviews, and saves his own personal opinion for the epilogue.

I was prepared to be furious and frustrated with our administration at the end of this book. Instead I walk away with a better understanding of the challenges faced and the intricacies (and difficulties) of governing a country. ( )

A detailed accounting of the Trump presidency, using direct interviews with Trump and his staff.

It details his divisiveness, indecision, failure to lead, and correctly concludes he is the wrong person for the job. ( )

This one was a bit exhausting. Woodward's recounting of his conversations with Trump portray the conversation with a thoughtful journalist and a brick wall. ( )

Sadly with a couple of years hindsight, although Woodward’s record of the first three years of Trump’s presidency remains damning, the main argument that Trump was not suitable to be President of the USA is now also commonplace. We lived through those mad times and survived.
As you should expect as written by Woodward, it is eminently readable, broken into 46 chapters which take you from department to department of Trump’s administration, moving the story forwards, history.

Where the book works best for me is in telling the stories of Mattis, Tillerson and Coats. People who served their country, but were betrayed by their President.
I am currently also reading the stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and I think a lot of the military personnel who were asked to serve the US in the Trump administration were probably more than a little conversant with the stoicism of the Meditations.

The coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic is necessarily incomplete, as the book covers the period to July 2020, but it is illuminating for being written in that moment.

Although the book might now be viewed as historical reportage, it remains fascinating to read and I was particularly taken with chapter eleven about the nuclear threat of North Korea, where I hadn’t previously appreciated the US/South Korean response.
I will be reading Woodward’s next book, Peril. ( )

Strange in that Woodward as narrator is also a character commenting on the president. ( )