With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.
Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.
So far in 2018, I’ve read a number of political books:
- Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff
- What Happened by Hillary Clinton
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
- A Higher Loyalty by James Comey
- Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright
- Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I think you probably get the point. 2018 has been a year of politics for me. Fear is a book that I was really looking forward to reading. (Apparently, so was the rest of the world, because my library alone has about 200 people waiting for a copy.) And I didn’t really like this one as much as I’d expected to… but then again, how much can you really like a book like this?
The thing is, I think most of us can agree that Trump’s presidency has been a disaster. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He makes bad decisions. He changes his story as he sees fit. That’s not really news, and I didn’t really need a 420-page book to tell me that. Unfortunately, at least to me, it seemed that these basic facts made up the majority of the book. It’s still worth a read and it’s still interesting enough (though it made me very sad), but I would have liked a little bit more from it.
That said, the book is entirely saved by its last sentence, in which Trump is revealed to be “a fucking liar.”
Have you read Fear? What’s the best political non-fiction you’ve read recently?
Let’s talk in the comments!
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The Bibliophagist 
I liked in this one that we got to see a little more of what was going on behind the scenes with those trying to stop some of the more harmful items on his agenda from going through. I read a lot of political books this year and last too, I feel almost compelled to read them at this point…
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Oh, yes, I definitely agree that it was great to see that! I never really read political books before this year, but now I can’t seem to stop. My list just keeps growing.
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Same here! Last year was the beginning for me and now I can’t seem to stop, for better or for worse…
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I’m reading Bad Blood right now, and it is a tantalizing trainwreck (not the book, which is good, but the situation with Theranos). I’d recommend it if you’re looking for some dramatic non-fiction that doesn’t feel so depressing regarding, you know, the state of the free world
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Thank you for the recommendation! That sounds like the perfect kind of non-fiction. I just put a hold on it at my library!
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I appreciate your review and your fortitude for getting through the book. I’m not reading political books these days. Too depressing.
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I totally agree, I have to limit the amount of political books that I’m reading right now.
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