FIRE AND FURY

INSIDE THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

Little, Brown, 336pp, £20, Oldie price £14.96 inc p&p To produce the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time, Wolff loitered in the West Wing of the White House for several months. Although Trump had not granted him access, everyone else thought he had official approval, so they talked freely of how dysfunctional Trump is, with Steve Bannon being the principal complainant, and Wolff listened. ‘We’ve known all about this shambles for a long time now,’ wrote Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday

Times. ‘The real merit of Wolff’s book is that it brings it all together in one riveting narrative, with the truth coming directly sourced from the president’s own mortified advisers. The emperor’s clothes were falling down, but now they have vanished.’ Although ‘full of startling disclosures’, said David Sexton in the

Evening Standard, ‘this book amounts to much more than a treasure trove of gaffes and inanities. It is ferociously well-written and pitilessly focused — and it is destined to become the primary account of the first nine months of the Trump presidency.’ The ‘disrespectful vigour of his prose and the clarity of his analyses leave you in little doubt as to his fundamental credibility, denials notwithstanding’. Trump attacked the book on Twitter and on more traditional media and his lawyers threatened some kind of ban, which merely drove up sales.

‘In much of the book Trump appears to be – is this why he hates it so much? – a victim as much as (or as well as) a bully,’ wrote the BBC’S Justin Webb in the Times. ‘As well as being more entertaining than any political book has a right to be, and more terrifying than any horror film, it is also deeply unfair and often obviously inaccurate… a post-truth account of a post-truth presidency. Those claiming it’s all made up are the very same people who – let’s be blunt – made things up for a living.’