Fear

First we need to address this cover. It's a great cover, but I hate it. I hate having it in my house, on my coffee table, glaring up at people in the room. It's creepy. It's perfect for this book, but I will be very glad to give the book back to the library and have that cover out of my house!

That said. It was interesting comparing this book to Fire and Fury, which I read at the beginning of the year. Woodward is a very respected journalist, and you can tell how much he tries to remain objective and simply report the things that happened. Fire and Fury definitely had a slant to it. Fear doesn't have a slant, but it still comes off as negative. Which says something about the entire administration when trying to be objective still results in the president shown as a “fcking moron,” (Tillerson's words) or a “fcking liar.” (John Dowd's words.)

The thing that really struck me about this book was learning how much Trump wanted to pull completely out of South Korea. Even when he was told we could detect a North Korean missile launch in 7 seconds from South Korea, as opposed to 15 MINUTES from Alaska, (out of a 45-minute missile flight!) he still didn't see that as a good enough reason to stay in South Korea. (You know, treaties and allies aside.) His ignorance and stubbornness is mind-boggling.

It took me three or four days to get through this book, which is much slower than my normal single-day read time. The subject matter is just that weighty, though Woodward's writing style is fantastic. This is the first Woodward book I've actually read, but I want to look up his backlist now, because he's really good at not putting me to sleep!

One other difference from Fire and Fury - there were things in the book I didn't know. (And I pay attention to the news.) There wasn't really anything in Fire and Fury that was surprising to me. Fear did have new information.

It's a frightening, weighty book, so don't read it if you're not prepared for that. But it's good.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.