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.

Let's be honest, this book is basically gossip. You don't need the first hand accounts of administration lackeys to understand Trump and his government. This administration is fairly transparent about its xenophobic and economic priorities.

There's this point about 2/3rds through Woodward's book where you start to wonder if his key sources really get challenged for being part of the policies of the Trump administration. It never happens. It makes for a strange lack of accountability in a book that subscribes to “a great man” theory as the theme, but with Trump being a grand buffoon. Doesn't this make the story not Trump's lies and stupidity but rather the utter moral failure of the cabinet and hangers-on that enable his rule?

Maybe history will be kinder to Woodward's expose of the inner workings of the White House. To me, Fear seems like a cautionary tale in regards to how access journalism misses the real story of Trump's political fortunes: adjacency to power turned Woodward's sources into craven enablers, not “adults in the room.”