‘Fury’ filled with gossip, including old news
The outsize appetite for tales of President Donald Trump’s ignorance and braggadocio has found a generous and highly seasoned feast in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury.”
The book has dominated multiple news cycles, leading to Stephen Bannon’s departure from Breitbart News; and Trump’s lawyers even tried to block it from being published.
That, of course, means it became an instant best-seller upon its release last week.
The fastest-selling nonfiction book in publisher Henry Holt’s 151-year history, it quickly vanished from store shelves and online retailers.
The excellently produced audio version, however, remains immediately available.
Wolff reads his own short author’s note, explaining that the work stems from 200-plus interviews and conversations that took place during an 18-month period, the first being with then-candidate Trump as he polished off a pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.
In a composed voice, Holter Graham — a Baltimore native, actor and veteran audiobook narrator — delivers the rest of the truly bizarre tale of dysfunction.
Where a less-confident narrator might have allowed a smirking note to emerge, Graham maintains his poise, subtly picking up the narrative’s mood in slight modulations of tone
and unobtrusively freighted pauses.
Most of what we hear in the recording has been reported elsewhere, or even shared boastfully by the president himself.
It surely isn’t news, for example, that the Trump White House has its share of backstabbers or that Trump didn’t think he had a chance to be elected. The books says his candidacy was a move to strengthen the
faltering Trump brand.
But it does come as a surprise to hear that Trump knew — and cared — so little about his pledge to eliminate Obamacare that he asked why everyone couldn’t be covered by Medicare.
He also won’t allow anyone to touch his toothbrush.
The book equates to a long recording of high-octane gossip — 12 hours of it — but it is entirely appropriate for its tragicomic subject matter and for the current state of the country.