Trump books top charts

Fire and Fury, A Higher Loyalty, Fear – three books about Donald Trump have each sold more than a million copies in the United States, a first that reflects Americans’ fascination with their ever-surprising president.

The great majority of successful books on politics have been written by politicians themselves – or by ghostwriters working with them.

Barack Obama set the standard in the genre, selling a combined 4.6-million copies of his autobiographical books

Dreams from My Father and

The Audacity of Hope.

In their time, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton and even Sarah Palin all topped the best-seller lists at least for a few weeks, while not reaching Obama’s lofty level.

And in 1976, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward sold 630,000 copies of his The Final Days, chronicling the dramatic unwinding of the Nixon presidency.

After that, however, there have been no chart-toppers about a president.

But in just nine months, Fire and Fury by journalist and author Michael Wolff, A Higher Loyalty by former FBI chief James Comey, and Woodward’s Fear have sold a combined total of more than five million copies. While coming nowhere near the success of Woodward or Wolff, several books favourable to the president have also been successful – helped by Trump’s endorsements.

And the surging interest in political books seems far from peaking.

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (the author of Liar’s Poker and The Big Short), The Apprentice by Washington Post journalist Greg Miller, and the Stormy Daniels book Full Disclosure, which is about the adult film star’s alleged sexual liaison with Trump, are all set to reach bookstores on Tuesday.