Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World by H R McMaster; The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir by John Bolton; The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World by Jim Sciutto - review by Michael Cox

Michael Cox

Is He Mad or Just Pretending?

Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World

By

William Collins 496pp £25

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

By

Simon & Schuster 592pp £25

The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World

By

Harper 320pp £22
 

Donald Trump may or may not have made America great again but he has certainly done a lot for the publishing industry in the United States. The sheer volume of books about him printed since he took office is staggering. Indeed, I’m informed – though this might be fake news – that close to one book about Trump and his ‘inner circle’ has appeared every day for the last three and a half years. Notable publications over the past couple of years or so include a tell-all book on the goings-on in the White House by Michael Wolff, an attack on the Trump presidency by the former head of the FBI James Comey, two further insider accounts – one about Trump himself by his former personal attorney Michael Cohen and the other about Melania by a ‘friend’ (wonderfully subtitled ‘The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady’) – and an even more lurid attack on Trump by his own niece explaining ‘how my family created the world’s most dangerous man’. Then, a few months ago came the long-awaited publication of what many have claimed is the definitive work on the Trump White House, Fear by Washington insider of insiders, Bob Woodward.

Yet for all these attacks and exposés, the man is still in there with – as I write – a chance of retaining his place in the White House. Two hundred thousand deaths from Covid-19 and rising, an economy in meltdown, a country more divided than at any time in

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