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What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era
The Washington Post
’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic uses the books of the Trump era to argue that our response to this presidency reflects the same failures of imagination that made it possible.
As a book critic for The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada has read some 150 volumes claiming to diagnose why Trump was elected and what his presidency reveals about our nation. Many of these, he’s found, are more defensive than incisive, more righteous than right.
In Reading Trump’s America, Lozada uses these books to tell the story of how we understand ourselves in the Trump era, using as his main characters the political ideas and debates at play in America today. He dissects works on the white working class like Hillbilly Elegy; manifestos from the anti-Trump resistance like On Tyranny and No Is Not Enough; books on race, gender, and identity like How to Be an Antiracist and Good and Mad; polemics on the future of the conservative movement like The Corrosion of Conservatism; and of course plenty of books about Trump himself.
Lozada’s argument is provocative: that many of these books—whether written by liberals or conservatives, activists or academics, Trump’s true believers or his harshest critics—are vulnerable to the same blind spots, resentments, and failures that gave us his presidency. But Lozada also highlights the books that succeed in illuminating how America is changing in the 21st century. Reading Trump’s America is an intellectual history of the Trump era in real time, helping us transcend the battles of the moment and see ourselves for who we really are.
As a book critic for The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada has read some 150 volumes claiming to diagnose why Trump was elected and what his presidency reveals about our nation. Many of these, he’s found, are more defensive than incisive, more righteous than right.
In Reading Trump’s America, Lozada uses these books to tell the story of how we understand ourselves in the Trump era, using as his main characters the political ideas and debates at play in America today. He dissects works on the white working class like Hillbilly Elegy; manifestos from the anti-Trump resistance like On Tyranny and No Is Not Enough; books on race, gender, and identity like How to Be an Antiracist and Good and Mad; polemics on the future of the conservative movement like The Corrosion of Conservatism; and of course plenty of books about Trump himself.
Lozada’s argument is provocative: that many of these books—whether written by liberals or conservatives, activists or academics, Trump’s true believers or his harshest critics—are vulnerable to the same blind spots, resentments, and failures that gave us his presidency. But Lozada also highlights the books that succeed in illuminating how America is changing in the 21st century. Reading Trump’s America is an intellectual history of the Trump era in real time, helping us transcend the battles of the moment and see ourselves for who we really are.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published July 21, 2020
338 people are currently reading
2560 people want to read
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October 15, 2020
I have decided to embark on a mission to read a number of books on subjects that will be of great importance to the upcoming 2020 US Presidential Election. Many of these will focus on actors intricately involved in the process, in hopes that I can understand them better and, perhaps, educate others with the power to cast a ballot. I am, as always, open to serious recommendations from anyone who has a book I might like to include in the process.
This is Book #26 in my 2020 US Election Preparation Challenge.
Carlos Lozada took on a Herculean task of his own accord, beginning in the summer of 2016. With the rise of the ‘Trump’ factor, he looked to read as many pieces of non-fiction surrounding the media icon that he could, allowing him to amass an idea what people thought of the man through their published writing. After a Trump victory, this became a massive undertaking, but one the reader is able to enjoy as they sift through the pages of this phenomenal book. A significant literary review, if ever there was one, Lozada proves much by weaving together strong themes throughout this piece, while also giving the reader a snapshot of what others are thinking.
While I like to pride myself as trying to get a better idea of what people are saying ahead of the November 3rd election, Lozada has done so much more and put it all together in a digestible piece. His exploration of the America that helped elect Trump is one of the early themes, looking at how people who supported Trump think and live. Their socio-economic backgrounds, personal needs, and even family histories all come together in a series of book published that may not have have Trump in mind at all. The reader is able to take away a little more about the Trumpers, or at least what led them to choose him over Clinton in 2016, and how this could repeat itself in a few weeks.
From there, the exploration of institutional distrust, particularly from the Administration, comes to light. Many writers show how the head of the Executive Branch is purposely and intentionally eroding confidence in the other branches, while also using them for his own personal gains. Lozada exemplifies the lengths to which Trump has gone to vilify those who oppose him as lazy, useless, or out of touch with the people, while piling praise on those who suckle from the teat of his crazed sentiments.
Lozada spends a great amount of time focussing on the immigration policies that the Trump Administration has made their cornerstone during the term they have served. While the chants for hoping that America will return to greatness can be heard at rallies and throughout policy announcements, there is an utter lack of understanding that immigration was what helped America become the country it is today. Even though some within the Administration refuse to accept that the Statue of Liberty symbolises the importance of outsiders seeking refuge, many who write about this are happy to scoff at the silliness that erupts from the ignorant mouths spewing forth the lies.
There are some strong themes on womanising, lack of leadership, and even a propensity to bow to foreign control over the American ideal. All these come out in numerous books penned throughout the almost four years that Trump has held office, told from a variety of perspectives with strong examples dripping from the pages. All are painting with layers of conspiracy and twisted logic, something that neither Lozada or the authors of many books can decipher. It is troubling to read, but I am reminded that this is a strong cross-section of writing that is all coming up with some of the same outcomes.
So what?! Many Trumpers will come away from reading this and wonder why they wasted their time on this piece. I would ask that they either take a second to re-read the book or sit back and accept some scary truths. Many who support Trump would call this a collection of #fakenews or conspiracies based on lies (even alternate facts). However, Lozada has done something that many writers have tried to do on their own, substantiate the claims being made. This is not just three sources supporting a reporter’s claims in a story. This is not a single person’s sour grapes and fictional account of events to smear the president. These are countless books, telling numerous stories that all mesh together. If the conspiracy were that wide-spread to create lies and disservice, we would have to call it a Trump Rally. Not that I needed this book to believe this, but the truth seems much harder to deny when piled together with so many other accounts. To see that it is being supported with facts and not just “people are saying” or “I have heard”, adds depth to the piece that is lacking from the Trumpian diatribes (worry not, Lozada has an entire chapter about conspiracy theories and half-assertions that Trump has been making, as well as deconstructing it).
This book came highly recommended to me through my best friend. She had read some stuff about it from the Washington Post and was sure that this was right up my alley. She was right, but I cannot offer all the praise to her. I must applaud Carlos Lozada and his in-depth analysis as he read and synthesised a great deal of work within this piece. The attention to detail and thoroughness could not have been accomplished by anyone seeking to rush their work to publication. The chapters and themes are full of information and use a plethora of sources to substantiate the statements made. Lozada also includes a reading list at the end of each chapter, helping the curious reader to have direct reference to what they need to whet their ever-browning appetite on the subject. I would love to see a follow-up or second edition of this book once the smoke settles on the Trump Administration, as new and detailed exploration of COVID-19, 2020 Presidential Campaign, and Transition of Power is sure to beget many more books, all of which will surely have a story to tell. I can only hope that 2022 will be enough time to add to the already great things that this book brought to the surface.
Kudos, Mr. Lozada, for a sensational analysis. I bow to you with my lowly reading challenge and will be cherry picking from your list for my personal reading pleasure.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
This is Book #26 in my 2020 US Election Preparation Challenge.
Carlos Lozada took on a Herculean task of his own accord, beginning in the summer of 2016. With the rise of the ‘Trump’ factor, he looked to read as many pieces of non-fiction surrounding the media icon that he could, allowing him to amass an idea what people thought of the man through their published writing. After a Trump victory, this became a massive undertaking, but one the reader is able to enjoy as they sift through the pages of this phenomenal book. A significant literary review, if ever there was one, Lozada proves much by weaving together strong themes throughout this piece, while also giving the reader a snapshot of what others are thinking.
While I like to pride myself as trying to get a better idea of what people are saying ahead of the November 3rd election, Lozada has done so much more and put it all together in a digestible piece. His exploration of the America that helped elect Trump is one of the early themes, looking at how people who supported Trump think and live. Their socio-economic backgrounds, personal needs, and even family histories all come together in a series of book published that may not have have Trump in mind at all. The reader is able to take away a little more about the Trumpers, or at least what led them to choose him over Clinton in 2016, and how this could repeat itself in a few weeks.
From there, the exploration of institutional distrust, particularly from the Administration, comes to light. Many writers show how the head of the Executive Branch is purposely and intentionally eroding confidence in the other branches, while also using them for his own personal gains. Lozada exemplifies the lengths to which Trump has gone to vilify those who oppose him as lazy, useless, or out of touch with the people, while piling praise on those who suckle from the teat of his crazed sentiments.
Lozada spends a great amount of time focussing on the immigration policies that the Trump Administration has made their cornerstone during the term they have served. While the chants for hoping that America will return to greatness can be heard at rallies and throughout policy announcements, there is an utter lack of understanding that immigration was what helped America become the country it is today. Even though some within the Administration refuse to accept that the Statue of Liberty symbolises the importance of outsiders seeking refuge, many who write about this are happy to scoff at the silliness that erupts from the ignorant mouths spewing forth the lies.
There are some strong themes on womanising, lack of leadership, and even a propensity to bow to foreign control over the American ideal. All these come out in numerous books penned throughout the almost four years that Trump has held office, told from a variety of perspectives with strong examples dripping from the pages. All are painting with layers of conspiracy and twisted logic, something that neither Lozada or the authors of many books can decipher. It is troubling to read, but I am reminded that this is a strong cross-section of writing that is all coming up with some of the same outcomes.
So what?! Many Trumpers will come away from reading this and wonder why they wasted their time on this piece. I would ask that they either take a second to re-read the book or sit back and accept some scary truths. Many who support Trump would call this a collection of #fakenews or conspiracies based on lies (even alternate facts). However, Lozada has done something that many writers have tried to do on their own, substantiate the claims being made. This is not just three sources supporting a reporter’s claims in a story. This is not a single person’s sour grapes and fictional account of events to smear the president. These are countless books, telling numerous stories that all mesh together. If the conspiracy were that wide-spread to create lies and disservice, we would have to call it a Trump Rally. Not that I needed this book to believe this, but the truth seems much harder to deny when piled together with so many other accounts. To see that it is being supported with facts and not just “people are saying” or “I have heard”, adds depth to the piece that is lacking from the Trumpian diatribes (worry not, Lozada has an entire chapter about conspiracy theories and half-assertions that Trump has been making, as well as deconstructing it).
This book came highly recommended to me through my best friend. She had read some stuff about it from the Washington Post and was sure that this was right up my alley. She was right, but I cannot offer all the praise to her. I must applaud Carlos Lozada and his in-depth analysis as he read and synthesised a great deal of work within this piece. The attention to detail and thoroughness could not have been accomplished by anyone seeking to rush their work to publication. The chapters and themes are full of information and use a plethora of sources to substantiate the statements made. Lozada also includes a reading list at the end of each chapter, helping the curious reader to have direct reference to what they need to whet their ever-browning appetite on the subject. I would love to see a follow-up or second edition of this book once the smoke settles on the Trump Administration, as new and detailed exploration of COVID-19, 2020 Presidential Campaign, and Transition of Power is sure to beget many more books, all of which will surely have a story to tell. I can only hope that 2022 will be enough time to add to the already great things that this book brought to the surface.
Kudos, Mr. Lozada, for a sensational analysis. I bow to you with my lowly reading challenge and will be cherry picking from your list for my personal reading pleasure.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
November 2, 2020
I am one of those people who reads when I am anxious or worried about something. As such, I have read ALL the Trump books. And finally, I have been rewarded with a review of the Trump book phenomenon by Lozada's excellent and brilliant critique of the various forms of the genre. My favorite section in this book is when he talks about books by conservatives trying to justify trumpism. The satire is thick and yet understated enough to be truly hilarious.
February 23, 2021
Those who like to read and write book reviews will appreciate Carlos Lozada, the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction reviewer‘s attempt to explain the Trump Era through the synthesis and analysis of 150 recent books. To complete this enormous task, Lozada divides the books into sub-categories that include and move beyond the books on White House dysfunction, which he refers to as the Chaos Chronicles.
Lozada first examines political movements and thought- the resistance books of liberals and progressives, books that analyze the motivations of Trump supporters in the Heartland, and both the critical and sycophantic literature written by conservatives. He also examines the literature on specific issues: immigration, systemic racism, feminism, Russian interference and concludes by reviewing books that place Trumpism in a broader historical context.
Lozada’s writing is clear and lucid. His analysis is thought-provoking. It provides an excellent background for those trying to grapple with what happened and where to go from here. He also provides an appendix of the 12 best books that he recommends for further reading.
Lozada first examines political movements and thought- the resistance books of liberals and progressives, books that analyze the motivations of Trump supporters in the Heartland, and both the critical and sycophantic literature written by conservatives. He also examines the literature on specific issues: immigration, systemic racism, feminism, Russian interference and concludes by reviewing books that place Trumpism in a broader historical context.
Lozada’s writing is clear and lucid. His analysis is thought-provoking. It provides an excellent background for those trying to grapple with what happened and where to go from here. He also provides an appendix of the 12 best books that he recommends for further reading.
November 20, 2024
11/20 addendum: It's sad that half the country would rather have an anti-intellectual narcissistic sociopath as president (again) rather than an overly-qualified black woman, but that's the world we live in. Our best defense against someone like Trump is knowledge, and the books listed at the end of this review are still relevant; perhaps more now than ever. And the list will keep growing...
It may seem like we’ve gotten through the worst of it, but the Trump Era is not over yet. Joe Biden may be taking over as our new Commander-in-chief, but the shitstorm he is walking into and the damage control he is going to undertake will take years to undo and repair.
Those of us who scratched our heads and shed actual tears of sorrow when he was elected in 2016; those of us who saw the kind of unqualified, incompetent, and dangerous person that he was early on; those of us who went through four years trying to find subtle ways of fighting back and/or calmly trying to talk sense into his religious followers (many of whom were our co-workers, bosses, neighbors, or relatives); those of us who were neither shocked nor surprised by the events at the U.S. Capitol building last week; those of us who want (correction: need) to see him held accountable for a lifetime of actual crimes he has committed:
We still have so many questions. We still have no idea what the hell to tell our children. We are still scared. We are still confused. We are still angry.
We will be talking about these last four years for a long time. Not only that, but there is more about these last four years that we don’t even know about, I’m sure. There is more to come, and far more books to be written in the future about the Trump Era.
Carlos Lozada, the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post, has done the thankless and unbelievable job of reading the literally hundreds of books that have thus far been written about Trump. His overview and analysis of this literature (a field that I have dubbed “Trump Studies”) is found in his book “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era”.
First off, I think Lozada clearly deserves a medal or a huge monetary prize for doing something that most people wouldn’t dream of doing. I myself have read many of the books he writes about but nowhere close to the amount that exists out there. He has, thank God, read them all so that we don’t have to.
Lozada’s undertaking reminds me a bit of Morgan Spurlock’s month-long endeavor to eat only McDonald’s food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in his film “Super-Size Me.” Both are incredibly horrible ideas, and both, I’m sure, resulted in, at times, thoughts of suicide or the warm embrace of accidental death.
Thankfully, Lozada survived with his wits intact. He actually learned quite a bit from the exercise, too. There is, thankfully, a good deal of humor mixed in with the horribleness.
Lozada’s book breaks down the “genre” of Trump Era literature (Trump Lit?) into several subgenres. The first, of course, are books written (supposedly) by the Don himself: “The Art of the Deal”, “The Art of the Comeback”, “Crippled America”, etc. Believe it or not, the “etc.” covers a lot of ground. He has actually written many books. Of course, we know that he didn’t actually write them. According to some of his ghostwriters, Trump didn’t even read them. This touches on a point that Lozada makes early: Trump doesn’t read. At all. He barely has the attention span for Dr. Seuss let alone Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Oh wait, she’s a woman—-he’d never bother anyway.)
Lozada starts to make a joke about this, but then realizes how seriously unfunny it is: “Yes, I would be delighted if our president read more books, even more so if they were good ones. But of the many concerns I have about Trump, a thin TBR pile is not foremost among them. I’d settle for him reading his briefing materials. Or the Constitution. (p. 4-5)”
Subsequent chapters deal with books about the forgotten folk, like the white rural poor, who found solace in Trump’s words and came out in droves to vote, supposedly, in 2016. These are books like J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy”, Nancy Isenberg’s “White Trash”, and Sarah Smarsh’s “Heartland”. Many of these books became bestsellers, tapping into a liberal elite sense of guilt which, of course, later turned to resentment.
Other chapters deal with identity politics and Race (books like Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be An Antiracist”, Bari Weiss’s “How to Fight Anti-Semitism”, and Wesley Yang’s “The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays”), the Me Too Movement (Chanel Miller’s “Know My Name: A Memoir”, Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding, eds.’ “Nasty Women”, and Anti Zeisler’s “We Were Feminists Once”), and books about the whole Russia-Trump connection (Greg Miller’s “The Apprentice”, David Shimer’s “Rigged”, and Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”).
Don’t forget the countless books by Trump apologists (Newt Gingrich’s “Trump’s America”, Jeanine Pirro’s “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals”, and Donald Trump Jr.’s “Triggered”), even though much of it is forgettable. Except for this gem: Sean Spicer, in his book “The Briefing” in which he (apparently in all seriousness) writes about how Donald Trump is “a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow”. Damn, that’s love.
Lozada offers some brief critiques about each book, but his real intention is to mine every book (even the ones he didn’t like) for an understanding and a truth about what the fuck happened these past four years. That he manages to be funny, entertaining, and extremely informative while doing so makes this an important book.
Lozada’s last chapter is simply a list of the top twelve books (in no particular order of importance) that he felt were the best ones he read in the past four years, and the ones that would be the most long-lasting. If you’re like me, you love lists, especially about books, so I’m sharing his list with all of you. You’re welcome.
*”We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America” by Jennifer Silva
* “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder
*“A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream” by Yuval Levin
* “America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States” by Erika Lee
* “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America” by Gary Grandin
* “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy” by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
* “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and as he bandele
* “The Mueller Report”
* “Know My Name: A Memoir” by Chanel Miller
* “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis
* “Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office” by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes
* “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy” by Carol Anderson
It may seem like we’ve gotten through the worst of it, but the Trump Era is not over yet. Joe Biden may be taking over as our new Commander-in-chief, but the shitstorm he is walking into and the damage control he is going to undertake will take years to undo and repair.
Those of us who scratched our heads and shed actual tears of sorrow when he was elected in 2016; those of us who saw the kind of unqualified, incompetent, and dangerous person that he was early on; those of us who went through four years trying to find subtle ways of fighting back and/or calmly trying to talk sense into his religious followers (many of whom were our co-workers, bosses, neighbors, or relatives); those of us who were neither shocked nor surprised by the events at the U.S. Capitol building last week; those of us who want (correction: need) to see him held accountable for a lifetime of actual crimes he has committed:
We still have so many questions. We still have no idea what the hell to tell our children. We are still scared. We are still confused. We are still angry.
We will be talking about these last four years for a long time. Not only that, but there is more about these last four years that we don’t even know about, I’m sure. There is more to come, and far more books to be written in the future about the Trump Era.
Carlos Lozada, the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post, has done the thankless and unbelievable job of reading the literally hundreds of books that have thus far been written about Trump. His overview and analysis of this literature (a field that I have dubbed “Trump Studies”) is found in his book “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era”.
First off, I think Lozada clearly deserves a medal or a huge monetary prize for doing something that most people wouldn’t dream of doing. I myself have read many of the books he writes about but nowhere close to the amount that exists out there. He has, thank God, read them all so that we don’t have to.
Lozada’s undertaking reminds me a bit of Morgan Spurlock’s month-long endeavor to eat only McDonald’s food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in his film “Super-Size Me.” Both are incredibly horrible ideas, and both, I’m sure, resulted in, at times, thoughts of suicide or the warm embrace of accidental death.
Thankfully, Lozada survived with his wits intact. He actually learned quite a bit from the exercise, too. There is, thankfully, a good deal of humor mixed in with the horribleness.
Lozada’s book breaks down the “genre” of Trump Era literature (Trump Lit?) into several subgenres. The first, of course, are books written (supposedly) by the Don himself: “The Art of the Deal”, “The Art of the Comeback”, “Crippled America”, etc. Believe it or not, the “etc.” covers a lot of ground. He has actually written many books. Of course, we know that he didn’t actually write them. According to some of his ghostwriters, Trump didn’t even read them. This touches on a point that Lozada makes early: Trump doesn’t read. At all. He barely has the attention span for Dr. Seuss let alone Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Oh wait, she’s a woman—-he’d never bother anyway.)
Lozada starts to make a joke about this, but then realizes how seriously unfunny it is: “Yes, I would be delighted if our president read more books, even more so if they were good ones. But of the many concerns I have about Trump, a thin TBR pile is not foremost among them. I’d settle for him reading his briefing materials. Or the Constitution. (p. 4-5)”
Subsequent chapters deal with books about the forgotten folk, like the white rural poor, who found solace in Trump’s words and came out in droves to vote, supposedly, in 2016. These are books like J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy”, Nancy Isenberg’s “White Trash”, and Sarah Smarsh’s “Heartland”. Many of these books became bestsellers, tapping into a liberal elite sense of guilt which, of course, later turned to resentment.
Other chapters deal with identity politics and Race (books like Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be An Antiracist”, Bari Weiss’s “How to Fight Anti-Semitism”, and Wesley Yang’s “The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays”), the Me Too Movement (Chanel Miller’s “Know My Name: A Memoir”, Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding, eds.’ “Nasty Women”, and Anti Zeisler’s “We Were Feminists Once”), and books about the whole Russia-Trump connection (Greg Miller’s “The Apprentice”, David Shimer’s “Rigged”, and Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”).
Don’t forget the countless books by Trump apologists (Newt Gingrich’s “Trump’s America”, Jeanine Pirro’s “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals”, and Donald Trump Jr.’s “Triggered”), even though much of it is forgettable. Except for this gem: Sean Spicer, in his book “The Briefing” in which he (apparently in all seriousness) writes about how Donald Trump is “a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow”. Damn, that’s love.
Lozada offers some brief critiques about each book, but his real intention is to mine every book (even the ones he didn’t like) for an understanding and a truth about what the fuck happened these past four years. That he manages to be funny, entertaining, and extremely informative while doing so makes this an important book.
Lozada’s last chapter is simply a list of the top twelve books (in no particular order of importance) that he felt were the best ones he read in the past four years, and the ones that would be the most long-lasting. If you’re like me, you love lists, especially about books, so I’m sharing his list with all of you. You’re welcome.
*”We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America” by Jennifer Silva
* “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder
*“A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream” by Yuval Levin
* “America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States” by Erika Lee
* “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America” by Gary Grandin
* “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy” by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
* “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and as he bandele
* “The Mueller Report”
* “Know My Name: A Memoir” by Chanel Miller
* “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis
* “Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office” by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes
* “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy” by Carol Anderson
January 10, 2021
4.5
The date I'm finishing this book is a few days after the storming of the Capitol and one week before Joe Biden's inauguration. I've had to self-medicate with a rum and coke every night since then so I can get to sleep. Hopefully I can rest more peacefully after inauguration day.
When I first read the title I thought this book was going to help explain how America became receptive to a president like Trump - but it's not. It's a review of almost all the Trump books written since Trump became a politicized Reality TV celebrity. The author, Carlos Lozada, is in a good position to do this since he was a book critic at the Washington Post for 15 years.
At the end of the book, Lozada listed 12 books he considered the best. I think I'll pick one to read: Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes. Otherwise, I'm going back to my project of sequentially reading a biography of every president. I'm only up to Grover Cleveland. Ah, for the good old days (not!) This was during the Gilded Age and our presidents then weren't exactly stellar. But at least they had some respect for the office.
The date I'm finishing this book is a few days after the storming of the Capitol and one week before Joe Biden's inauguration. I've had to self-medicate with a rum and coke every night since then so I can get to sleep. Hopefully I can rest more peacefully after inauguration day.
When I first read the title I thought this book was going to help explain how America became receptive to a president like Trump - but it's not. It's a review of almost all the Trump books written since Trump became a politicized Reality TV celebrity. The author, Carlos Lozada, is in a good position to do this since he was a book critic at the Washington Post for 15 years.
At the end of the book, Lozada listed 12 books he considered the best. I think I'll pick one to read: Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes. Otherwise, I'm going back to my project of sequentially reading a biography of every president. I'm only up to Grover Cleveland. Ah, for the good old days (not!) This was during the Gilded Age and our presidents then weren't exactly stellar. But at least they had some respect for the office.
December 25, 2020
Mr. Lozada, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic of The Washington Post, recently decided to task himself with the (to me, self-flagellating) charge of reading 150 books about Trump and these times!
Courageous? Insane? Glutton for punishment? Seeking to qualify for admission to Bedlam?
I decided to purchase this book after reading some glowing reviews, and I am glad I did. I am happy to report that not only did he — somehow! — manage to remain sane after this experience, but that he has gifted the rest of us with a beautifully written, engaging reflection upon these many books from which he draws glittering threads of wisdom, some of which reflect several authors’ biases or narrowness of focus, but most of which offer us insights worthy of remembering and pondering.
In his Introduction he writes, “As both a reader and citizen, I believe that the early intellectual response to the Trump presidency is of enormous consequence. This president has challenged principles, practices, and standards of American life — on the accountability and legitimacy of our leaders, on who can take part in the American experiment. With that challenge in mind, the books that matter most right now are not necessarily those revealing White House intrigue, policy disputes, or official scandals, no matter how crucial those subjects. They are, instead, the books that enable and ennoble a national reexamination — one that has attempted to carry out on his own and on our behalf. They are the books that show how our current conflicts fit into the nation’s story, that hold fast to the American tradition of always seeing ourselves anew.” (P. 7)
He has organized his book into ten themed chapters of modest length, in which his sentences flow with equal ease and insight. These themes are familiar ones, including observations on what has happened to “conservatism” in recent decades, the dilemma of immigration and immigrants, the problem of "alternative facts” and the confusion elicited by a constant stream of lies, our original sin of racism, and the so-far amazing impermeability of Trump to MeToo-like charges. At the end of each chapter, he lists the books discussed in that chapter, including the year published and the publishing company.
This book is not a polemic, nor is it overtly partisan — he does not write as some Democratic-stand-in but, rather, as an engaged and concerned citizen. Certainly those who worship Trump will find the book offensive since Lozada cites facts and truths throughout, both by quoting from the authors whose works he has reviewed and also from his own journalistic knowledge. But I think the “rest of us” — those appalled by the incivility and seeming hopelessness of our gridlocked times — can gain much from what turns out to be a very quick read.
In his concluding chapter — In Plain View — he writes, “The United States at its most heroic — striving to meet its promise of equality and liberty — is also the United States at its least inspiring, as it fails, repeatedly, to get there. ‘A nation founded on ideals, universal truths, also opens itself to charges of hypocrisy at every turn,’ the Harvard University historian Jill Lepore writes in This America (2019). Hypocrisy and inconsistency are such recurring features of American democracy that they are less its hindrance than its definition.
“That’s why histories connecting the Trump era to the long arc of America’s democratic struggle feel particularly essential now, and they read that way, too.” (P. 218)
Lozada believes that Trump “has violated the most essential of presidential norms [by] governing with only his core supporters, with some of the people – in mind, rather than the nation in full[.]” In this he is fulfilling what Princeton University political theories Jan-Werner Müller summarizes as the key tenet of populism: “Only some of the people are really the people.” (P. 221)
In his Epilogue, he gives us twelve books that he regards as the finest in helping us to understand Trump and these times in the context of our full history. For those who will not be able to read What Were We Thinking, I provide them here in the order he lists them:
1) We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America, by Jennifer Silva
2) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder
3) A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, by Yuval Levin
4) America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, by Erika Lee
5) The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin
6) A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
7) When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrice Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
8) Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III
9) Know My Name: A Memoir, by Chanel Miller
10) The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis
11) Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office, by Susan Hennessy and Benjamin Wittes
12) One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy, by Carol Anderson
Courageous? Insane? Glutton for punishment? Seeking to qualify for admission to Bedlam?
I decided to purchase this book after reading some glowing reviews, and I am glad I did. I am happy to report that not only did he — somehow! — manage to remain sane after this experience, but that he has gifted the rest of us with a beautifully written, engaging reflection upon these many books from which he draws glittering threads of wisdom, some of which reflect several authors’ biases or narrowness of focus, but most of which offer us insights worthy of remembering and pondering.
In his Introduction he writes, “As both a reader and citizen, I believe that the early intellectual response to the Trump presidency is of enormous consequence. This president has challenged principles, practices, and standards of American life — on the accountability and legitimacy of our leaders, on who can take part in the American experiment. With that challenge in mind, the books that matter most right now are not necessarily those revealing White House intrigue, policy disputes, or official scandals, no matter how crucial those subjects. They are, instead, the books that enable and ennoble a national reexamination — one that has attempted to carry out on his own and on our behalf. They are the books that show how our current conflicts fit into the nation’s story, that hold fast to the American tradition of always seeing ourselves anew.” (P. 7)
He has organized his book into ten themed chapters of modest length, in which his sentences flow with equal ease and insight. These themes are familiar ones, including observations on what has happened to “conservatism” in recent decades, the dilemma of immigration and immigrants, the problem of "alternative facts” and the confusion elicited by a constant stream of lies, our original sin of racism, and the so-far amazing impermeability of Trump to MeToo-like charges. At the end of each chapter, he lists the books discussed in that chapter, including the year published and the publishing company.
This book is not a polemic, nor is it overtly partisan — he does not write as some Democratic-stand-in but, rather, as an engaged and concerned citizen. Certainly those who worship Trump will find the book offensive since Lozada cites facts and truths throughout, both by quoting from the authors whose works he has reviewed and also from his own journalistic knowledge. But I think the “rest of us” — those appalled by the incivility and seeming hopelessness of our gridlocked times — can gain much from what turns out to be a very quick read.
In his concluding chapter — In Plain View — he writes, “The United States at its most heroic — striving to meet its promise of equality and liberty — is also the United States at its least inspiring, as it fails, repeatedly, to get there. ‘A nation founded on ideals, universal truths, also opens itself to charges of hypocrisy at every turn,’ the Harvard University historian Jill Lepore writes in This America (2019). Hypocrisy and inconsistency are such recurring features of American democracy that they are less its hindrance than its definition.
“That’s why histories connecting the Trump era to the long arc of America’s democratic struggle feel particularly essential now, and they read that way, too.” (P. 218)
Lozada believes that Trump “has violated the most essential of presidential norms [by] governing with only his core supporters, with some of the people – in mind, rather than the nation in full[.]” In this he is fulfilling what Princeton University political theories Jan-Werner Müller summarizes as the key tenet of populism: “Only some of the people are really the people.” (P. 221)
In his Epilogue, he gives us twelve books that he regards as the finest in helping us to understand Trump and these times in the context of our full history. For those who will not be able to read What Were We Thinking, I provide them here in the order he lists them:
1) We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America, by Jennifer Silva
2) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder
3) A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, by Yuval Levin
4) America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, by Erika Lee
5) The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin
6) A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
7) When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrice Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
8) Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III
9) Know My Name: A Memoir, by Chanel Miller
10) The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis
11) Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office, by Susan Hennessy and Benjamin Wittes
12) One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy, by Carol Anderson
December 11, 2020
Good book for what it is. The Washington Post nonfiction book review guy writes a banger of an analysis on the torrent of political books during and about the Trump Eea. It’s like Cliff Notes for all of the political books you said you would but never did read this year.
Ive read a lot of the books talked about, from the wide variety of political cover letters masquerading as memoirs, to the denser Muller Report. Much of what I read this year was politically interested due to the election. Searching for definitions, explanations, clever dissections of our shared experience. But words and books are tricky, and political authors usually have thinly veiled agendas. A good author can obscure the truth just as much as a great author can reveal it.
At some point you grow tired of the hand ringing, the self interest, having to fact check what you read. sometimes I get tired of of whatever the latest pulp non-fiction turned out about the Trump administration. Whatever defector is helping to preserve their reputation as they flee the sinking ship. Whatever concerned “Citizen“ has engaged in written hand ringing about the death of (pick one: truth, media, democracy, civility, unwarranted sexual harassment). Over what topic will the next author mince the thesaurus in order to find Amillion synonyms for “unprecedented despicable behavior” or “fake news”
The torrent of people with no distinguishable writing ability or clarity of thought, yet the desire to say something is seemingly unlimited. Anyone with the platform and opposable thumbs can make their opinions known widely. Myself included. The “soul of America” is as elusive as a real soul in that it probably doesn’t exist but as widely poeticized. The “two Americas” the “split Americas” it’s just this avalanche of new jargon and bad analysis. And like a cold drink of water after a summer run in Texas, this book is refreshing in its contrast. Lozada does not have a monopoly on the truth, but he does not seem to buy into much of the hyperbolic bullshit others do. Maybe it’s a tempered opinion from having read 100+ hyperbolic tomes himself. Or from just a differing temperament to a talk show news host.
Because of this, reading this book felt like finding a friend. A fellow traveler on the road to understanding. Another seeker in the journey to enlightenment.
Lozada writes clearly. If it times a little exhaustingly with the absolute breath of reading that he’s done. I now understand why my friends mother “shut the fuck up Rick“ when I bring up yet another reference to The most recent book I’ve read. Or when I recommend yet another addition to their to read pile before have a chance to read the last book I recommended. I appreciate all the recommendations but it did feel a bit overwhelming.
His analysis of #MeToo, the Muller report, and the onslaught of “tell all” memoirs that actually tell a little is thoughtful and on par with the standards of the Washington post.
In all I enjoyed this book a lot. But it might fall flat if you are less familiar with many of the books mentioned.
Ive read a lot of the books talked about, from the wide variety of political cover letters masquerading as memoirs, to the denser Muller Report. Much of what I read this year was politically interested due to the election. Searching for definitions, explanations, clever dissections of our shared experience. But words and books are tricky, and political authors usually have thinly veiled agendas. A good author can obscure the truth just as much as a great author can reveal it.
At some point you grow tired of the hand ringing, the self interest, having to fact check what you read. sometimes I get tired of of whatever the latest pulp non-fiction turned out about the Trump administration. Whatever defector is helping to preserve their reputation as they flee the sinking ship. Whatever concerned “Citizen“ has engaged in written hand ringing about the death of (pick one: truth, media, democracy, civility, unwarranted sexual harassment). Over what topic will the next author mince the thesaurus in order to find Amillion synonyms for “unprecedented despicable behavior” or “fake news”
The torrent of people with no distinguishable writing ability or clarity of thought, yet the desire to say something is seemingly unlimited. Anyone with the platform and opposable thumbs can make their opinions known widely. Myself included. The “soul of America” is as elusive as a real soul in that it probably doesn’t exist but as widely poeticized. The “two Americas” the “split Americas” it’s just this avalanche of new jargon and bad analysis. And like a cold drink of water after a summer run in Texas, this book is refreshing in its contrast. Lozada does not have a monopoly on the truth, but he does not seem to buy into much of the hyperbolic bullshit others do. Maybe it’s a tempered opinion from having read 100+ hyperbolic tomes himself. Or from just a differing temperament to a talk show news host.
Because of this, reading this book felt like finding a friend. A fellow traveler on the road to understanding. Another seeker in the journey to enlightenment.
Lozada writes clearly. If it times a little exhaustingly with the absolute breath of reading that he’s done. I now understand why my friends mother “shut the fuck up Rick“ when I bring up yet another reference to The most recent book I’ve read. Or when I recommend yet another addition to their to read pile before have a chance to read the last book I recommended. I appreciate all the recommendations but it did feel a bit overwhelming.
His analysis of #MeToo, the Muller report, and the onslaught of “tell all” memoirs that actually tell a little is thoughtful and on par with the standards of the Washington post.
In all I enjoyed this book a lot. But it might fall flat if you are less familiar with many of the books mentioned.
October 14, 2020
Every book mentioned in this book had something that this book did not have; they had a narrative, a story that is coherent within the context of that book, this book stumbles into a narrative less framework by reacting willy-nilly to what each of the brief summaries of the books is trying to say while itself ignoring the warning many of the books reviewed was warning against while falling into post-modernist relativism where there is not a narrative about the narrative and that truth is only what the Fascist leader says it is, because in the end it is for us to grab onto the best perspective and never outsource our believes to one Fascist leader or worse yet to an ideology depended only on the authority of a deplorable human being. This author needs to be somewhere rather than his view from nowhere.
It is books like this one that helps create and enable the deplorables who vote for the most deplorable of all purveyors of a world without an overriding central authority residing from the view from nowhere that gives us what they claim are our truths separating us with false facts, false reality, alternative realities and conspiracy theories, and most certainly the deplorables who make up the most post-modernist of all post-modernist story teller who claims his is the only story worth telling and believing and they are as deplorable as they who they support.
There was one factual statement in this book I would like to correct from this book. In the never Trumper section of the book, the author said that all never Trumpers never blame themselves for creating the mess and they think of Trump as something outside of themselves. The author is wrong and he ignored Stuart Spencer’s book It was all a Lie which was published before this book's deadline. Spencer blames himself for not realizing all along that the Republicans are deplorable, racist, hateful people who believe that ‘for the people’ really means ‘for some of the people and that other people are not really people’. If you have to read a book in this genre, I would recommend Spencer’s book over this book.
This book is partly why we are in the position that 45% of Americans and a majority of men can support a fascist and this book does nothing to combat that since it doesn’t have a story to tell and it allows all other stories to have equal weight. Even when that story is bogus. Trump is a monster and needs to be voted out of office and there is a story to be told coherently. This book does not do that.
It is books like this one that helps create and enable the deplorables who vote for the most deplorable of all purveyors of a world without an overriding central authority residing from the view from nowhere that gives us what they claim are our truths separating us with false facts, false reality, alternative realities and conspiracy theories, and most certainly the deplorables who make up the most post-modernist of all post-modernist story teller who claims his is the only story worth telling and believing and they are as deplorable as they who they support.
There was one factual statement in this book I would like to correct from this book. In the never Trumper section of the book, the author said that all never Trumpers never blame themselves for creating the mess and they think of Trump as something outside of themselves. The author is wrong and he ignored Stuart Spencer’s book It was all a Lie which was published before this book's deadline. Spencer blames himself for not realizing all along that the Republicans are deplorable, racist, hateful people who believe that ‘for the people’ really means ‘for some of the people and that other people are not really people’. If you have to read a book in this genre, I would recommend Spencer’s book over this book.
This book is partly why we are in the position that 45% of Americans and a majority of men can support a fascist and this book does nothing to combat that since it doesn’t have a story to tell and it allows all other stories to have equal weight. Even when that story is bogus. Trump is a monster and needs to be voted out of office and there is a story to be told coherently. This book does not do that.
January 21, 2021
An interesting review of almost all of the major books published about and around Trump in the past five years. It was a comprehensive way to review all of the craziness that has transpired since 2015, helpful for me on a personal and psychological level. Lozada's take on the texts was illuminating, at times he reveals his own blindspots and shortcomings, in others he admits to having learned and been compelled. A good read, a decent way to find both new books, and a sense of closure for the worst presidency in American history.
March 16, 2021
The best thing about this book is that I didn't have to read the other books. Enjoyable (?) chronicle of thinking on left and right in reaction to the Trump era.
November 13, 2020
this was like a big long book review but given that i love book reviews....it worked for me! loved it and i have even more books to read now!
January 24, 2021
While fiction is my preference and I typically don’t care to read about “politics,” I have to admit to reading quite a few of the “Trump” books discussed in this book.
I decided to read (and purchase) this book because the NPR Politics podcast has a book group reading it and I love books. That said, I was quite disappointed. Maybe I should have figured a book critic would have been critical of books, but it wasn’t until the seventh chapter (of ten), that the author seemed to have a “nice” thing to say about these books.
Not sure who I’d recommend this book to. I guess if you were in a coma for the last four years, you’d benefit greatly from this book!
I decided to read (and purchase) this book because the NPR Politics podcast has a book group reading it and I love books. That said, I was quite disappointed. Maybe I should have figured a book critic would have been critical of books, but it wasn’t until the seventh chapter (of ten), that the author seemed to have a “nice” thing to say about these books.
Not sure who I’d recommend this book to. I guess if you were in a coma for the last four years, you’d benefit greatly from this book!
October 16, 2021
For what it is, this is a remarkable book. Lozada covers about 139 individual books (counting up the book list at the end of each chapter), and makes reference to all of Trump’s books + a few other books. In all, it’s a slim book covering a vast amount of ground.
Lozada’s great power is synthesizing the information of these books into broad themes and categories, and seeing how they play off each other. There are strengths and weaknesses inherent in this book. Some of the weaknesses are the limitations of the books relied upon (the conservative selection is thin, even though he enjoyed some of the better conservative minds out there). The other main weakness is the bias of the author himself, which can get reflected in his review of books which aren’t that great, but which he thinks are good.
That aside, it’s a remarkable survey of 2016 — spring/summer 2020. The book was published in October 2020, so you don’t get the election, and the pandemic has yet to hit the fall/winter spike of 2020. So while the pandemic exists, it plays a small part. Were you to write an updated version of this book, there’d be a chapter dedicated to the pandemic response of Trump. Hard to fault the book for that.
The strongest chapter is probably the first one, which deals with the outpouring of books talking about Trump’s relationship with the White Working Class voter. I think Lozada nicely sums of the book of this genre, while pointing towards some of the more sketchy anecdotes about it.
The funniest chapter is how Lozada effectively skewers the #Resistance genre of books. After going through that genre he basically carves it up as an unmemorable kind of book.
After that, it’s mostly a grab bag of insights and observations. The weakest chapters are probably the ones on immigration and “Russian lit.” Most of the books involved are so heavily tilted towards one direction that it’s hard to get balance. The “threat to democracy” suffers from a similar problem.
If you read it, you’ll likely come away with your own book list, highlighting titles that peak your interest. Notably missing, for me, are Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West,” George Will’s “The Conservative Sensibility,” and anything from the Ben Shapiro/Glenn Beck/Mark Levin crowd. Levin, Shapiro, and Ann Coulter dominated best seller lists during this time too. How they reacted to Trumpism needed more focus as part of the survey, imo (Coulter going from pro to against Trump is a fascinating flip, just like Max Boot’s flip, which is covered). I say this because offering up David Frum as a conservative voice is weak, to say the least.
But like Lozada says in the introduction, he covers about 150 books and even that’s only scratching the surface. Cover any other genres and the book gets too long. Lozada has a deft and concise writing style, which keeps the topic moving. It’s never dense. When you finish a chapter, it’s kind of remarkable how much ground he’s covered.
Solid book. Lozada has provided his own entry into the Trump canon, and unlike some of the books he reviewed, his is one that’s worth reading and contemplating no matter what you believe.
Lozada’s great power is synthesizing the information of these books into broad themes and categories, and seeing how they play off each other. There are strengths and weaknesses inherent in this book. Some of the weaknesses are the limitations of the books relied upon (the conservative selection is thin, even though he enjoyed some of the better conservative minds out there). The other main weakness is the bias of the author himself, which can get reflected in his review of books which aren’t that great, but which he thinks are good.
That aside, it’s a remarkable survey of 2016 — spring/summer 2020. The book was published in October 2020, so you don’t get the election, and the pandemic has yet to hit the fall/winter spike of 2020. So while the pandemic exists, it plays a small part. Were you to write an updated version of this book, there’d be a chapter dedicated to the pandemic response of Trump. Hard to fault the book for that.
The strongest chapter is probably the first one, which deals with the outpouring of books talking about Trump’s relationship with the White Working Class voter. I think Lozada nicely sums of the book of this genre, while pointing towards some of the more sketchy anecdotes about it.
The funniest chapter is how Lozada effectively skewers the #Resistance genre of books. After going through that genre he basically carves it up as an unmemorable kind of book.
After that, it’s mostly a grab bag of insights and observations. The weakest chapters are probably the ones on immigration and “Russian lit.” Most of the books involved are so heavily tilted towards one direction that it’s hard to get balance. The “threat to democracy” suffers from a similar problem.
If you read it, you’ll likely come away with your own book list, highlighting titles that peak your interest. Notably missing, for me, are Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West,” George Will’s “The Conservative Sensibility,” and anything from the Ben Shapiro/Glenn Beck/Mark Levin crowd. Levin, Shapiro, and Ann Coulter dominated best seller lists during this time too. How they reacted to Trumpism needed more focus as part of the survey, imo (Coulter going from pro to against Trump is a fascinating flip, just like Max Boot’s flip, which is covered). I say this because offering up David Frum as a conservative voice is weak, to say the least.
But like Lozada says in the introduction, he covers about 150 books and even that’s only scratching the surface. Cover any other genres and the book gets too long. Lozada has a deft and concise writing style, which keeps the topic moving. It’s never dense. When you finish a chapter, it’s kind of remarkable how much ground he’s covered.
Solid book. Lozada has provided his own entry into the Trump canon, and unlike some of the books he reviewed, his is one that’s worth reading and contemplating no matter what you believe.
October 12, 2020
If you want to read one book, that describes/summarizes Trump's rise to the power, reasons for it and the repercussions of that, then this is that book. The author has practically read every book that has been released, in this genre, and through out the book he is summarizing it. He also provides some interesting books recommendations.
The author says there are 3 types of conservatives: 1st type called sycophants who have embraced the Trump, 2nd type are never type conservatives and the 3rd type called pro- Trump Conservatives who are getting their things under his leadership (supreme court, judges).
A trump lie, has 5 steps
1. Stake a claim-- Comment on a political issue, which no one touches
2. Advance and deny --put out the lie without taking responsibility
3. create suspense-- promising evidence that never materializes
4. Discredit the opponent- by attacking anyone who claims that it is a lie
5. Claim a win, no matter what
The author says there are 3 types of conservatives: 1st type called sycophants who have embraced the Trump, 2nd type are never type conservatives and the 3rd type called pro- Trump Conservatives who are getting their things under his leadership (supreme court, judges).
A trump lie, has 5 steps
1. Stake a claim-- Comment on a political issue, which no one touches
2. Advance and deny --put out the lie without taking responsibility
3. create suspense-- promising evidence that never materializes
4. Discredit the opponent- by attacking anyone who claims that it is a lie
5. Claim a win, no matter what
August 5, 2024
Lozada has carved out a nice journalistic niche for himself. He is an able guide to this strange and conflicted time. Reading this book was a nice refresher on 2016-2020.
October 10, 2020
If you read one book about the Trump era...
April 5, 2021
** 4 stars **
Really good overview of Trump-era books broken down by genre. Lozada surveys 150 books about Trump ranging from "Heartlandia" books that attempt to explain rural white Trump voters to "resistance literature" to tales of Trump's incompetence to books on Russian election interference and collusion (and more!). Within each chapter, Lozada makes a central claim about what this genre of books tries to do and what they tell us about Trump and ourselves.
Lozada does a good job of delivering on his claims within each individual chapter, but doesn't quite deliver for me on his overarching claim that these books individually try to show a way forward while collectively revealing how we are still stuck. Writing is engaging and entertaining. Would recommend for readers who are interested in the content of Trump-era books but don't want to slog through the hundreds that exist.
Really good overview of Trump-era books broken down by genre. Lozada surveys 150 books about Trump ranging from "Heartlandia" books that attempt to explain rural white Trump voters to "resistance literature" to tales of Trump's incompetence to books on Russian election interference and collusion (and more!). Within each chapter, Lozada makes a central claim about what this genre of books tries to do and what they tell us about Trump and ourselves.
Lozada does a good job of delivering on his claims within each individual chapter, but doesn't quite deliver for me on his overarching claim that these books individually try to show a way forward while collectively revealing how we are still stuck. Writing is engaging and entertaining. Would recommend for readers who are interested in the content of Trump-era books but don't want to slog through the hundreds that exist.
November 1, 2020
superb piece of literary analysis (a book about books? sign me out). gives me MAJOR jonathan haidt vibes, which i always appreciate.
(this is me 1 hr after my first review, cus IT WASN'T ENOUGH)
the only reason why this is not a 5 is because i personally just wasn't into some of the chapters - especially the one on Trump & Russia.
just now, i went back and took some notes - and HOLY SMOKES, the quotes are SO quotable in this book (cries silently), here are some for y'all to enjoy and ruminate on:
- Hypocrisy and inconsistency are such recurring features of American democracy that they are less its hindrance than its definition.
- Such books are not beholden to this moment, which is why they reveal so much about it. The most essential books of the Trump era are scarcely about Trump at all.
- The greatest danger to be resisted, in other words, is not simply a change of [specific] policies, no matter how disgraceful the changes may be. It is the erosion of the very system of government that makes all resistance possible.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST... MY FAVOURITE...
Simply because Trump’s moral compass is broken does not mean that yours unerringly points north.
(this is me 1 hr after my first review, cus IT WASN'T ENOUGH)
the only reason why this is not a 5 is because i personally just wasn't into some of the chapters - especially the one on Trump & Russia.
just now, i went back and took some notes - and HOLY SMOKES, the quotes are SO quotable in this book (cries silently), here are some for y'all to enjoy and ruminate on:
- Hypocrisy and inconsistency are such recurring features of American democracy that they are less its hindrance than its definition.
- Such books are not beholden to this moment, which is why they reveal so much about it. The most essential books of the Trump era are scarcely about Trump at all.
- The greatest danger to be resisted, in other words, is not simply a change of [specific] policies, no matter how disgraceful the changes may be. It is the erosion of the very system of government that makes all resistance possible.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST... MY FAVOURITE...
Simply because Trump’s moral compass is broken does not mean that yours unerringly points north.
February 8, 2021
I feel like I am finally coming back into a kind of sanity that is evidenced by my ability to finally read about the last four years and the megalomaniac narcissist at the center of it all. That said, I don't have the time or the interest in reading many of the reams of books that have been written and will continue to be written about Trump and the Trump era. Lozada, as non fiction book critic for the Washington Post, has read these books and gives synopses and his takes on what happened and what it tells us about the weaknesses in our democratic processes.
Some of the books he talks about I read. I very much enjoyed (if that is the right word) White Trash because it opened my eyes to how demeaning poor people can lead to a lack of sympathy for them and justify political policies that hurt them like cutting welfare and various forms of governmental support. Lozada points out that the book did not address what role racism plays in the culture of poor White communities, but I felt that, while that is a legitimate criticism, it was not the goal of the book. I was glad to see the criticisms of Hillbilly Elegy which to me just reinforces the stereotypes White Trash tries to counter of a poor White class too lazy to work and pick themselves off the ground, not recognizing the role a poor education and a lack of opportunity in dying communities plays in keeping poor people down. Anyway, Lozada chooses We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America as the book that does the best job of explaining where all those Trumpers came from and what they are so angry about.
And that is how the book works through a broad range of categories -- he discusses the issues and then various books written about them and his critiques of the various books. At the end he recommends the best books if you want to really understand the issues without getting bogged down in a bookshelf. Many of his points are very good ones. Among others, that Trump did not create the circumstances that got him elected. The misinformation networks already existed. Voter suppression strategies were put in place at the state level after the Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County vs. Holder. The law prior to the Supreme Court decision had been that any change in election laws in states that had a history of discrimination had to be cleared by the federal government. There had been voter suppression before, but overturning the federal oversight opened the floodgates for 2016.
But he also explores the idea that Trump was not the first example of American democracy failing to live up to its ideals -- really just the latest. And I was very happy to see this because with all of the hype about Trump being the worst president ever and America coming the closest it has ever come to fascism we lose sight of all of the previous injustices -- slavery, the reconstruction after the Civil War that just changed the face of slavery while keeping the essentials, Jim Crow. In fact, America is always striving for an ideal and falling short and Lozada points out that it is important is to learn from the striving and pinpoint the weaknesses that cause us to fail, especially racial intolerance and xenophobia and fighting voter suppression. There is also a terrifying book about all of the things that have to be monitored at the federal level like monitoring nuclear waste to make sure it stays put and monitoring pandemics and such things that are really important and that Trump didn't understand or care about.
I personally feel that the important take home story for now is the ability of the American people to unite in the face of pure fascism and stand together and vote Trump out. And maybe this is temporary and some new more savvy fascist will rise up, but maybe we will take this time to shore up our democracy and try to undo some of the damage and maybe next time we will remember to stand together instead of factionalizing and squabbling and losing sight of what matters.
Some of the books he talks about I read. I very much enjoyed (if that is the right word) White Trash because it opened my eyes to how demeaning poor people can lead to a lack of sympathy for them and justify political policies that hurt them like cutting welfare and various forms of governmental support. Lozada points out that the book did not address what role racism plays in the culture of poor White communities, but I felt that, while that is a legitimate criticism, it was not the goal of the book. I was glad to see the criticisms of Hillbilly Elegy which to me just reinforces the stereotypes White Trash tries to counter of a poor White class too lazy to work and pick themselves off the ground, not recognizing the role a poor education and a lack of opportunity in dying communities plays in keeping poor people down. Anyway, Lozada chooses We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America as the book that does the best job of explaining where all those Trumpers came from and what they are so angry about.
And that is how the book works through a broad range of categories -- he discusses the issues and then various books written about them and his critiques of the various books. At the end he recommends the best books if you want to really understand the issues without getting bogged down in a bookshelf. Many of his points are very good ones. Among others, that Trump did not create the circumstances that got him elected. The misinformation networks already existed. Voter suppression strategies were put in place at the state level after the Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County vs. Holder. The law prior to the Supreme Court decision had been that any change in election laws in states that had a history of discrimination had to be cleared by the federal government. There had been voter suppression before, but overturning the federal oversight opened the floodgates for 2016.
But he also explores the idea that Trump was not the first example of American democracy failing to live up to its ideals -- really just the latest. And I was very happy to see this because with all of the hype about Trump being the worst president ever and America coming the closest it has ever come to fascism we lose sight of all of the previous injustices -- slavery, the reconstruction after the Civil War that just changed the face of slavery while keeping the essentials, Jim Crow. In fact, America is always striving for an ideal and falling short and Lozada points out that it is important is to learn from the striving and pinpoint the weaknesses that cause us to fail, especially racial intolerance and xenophobia and fighting voter suppression. There is also a terrifying book about all of the things that have to be monitored at the federal level like monitoring nuclear waste to make sure it stays put and monitoring pandemics and such things that are really important and that Trump didn't understand or care about.
I personally feel that the important take home story for now is the ability of the American people to unite in the face of pure fascism and stand together and vote Trump out. And maybe this is temporary and some new more savvy fascist will rise up, but maybe we will take this time to shore up our democracy and try to undo some of the damage and maybe next time we will remember to stand together instead of factionalizing and squabbling and losing sight of what matters.
October 25, 2020
This seemed like a fitting choice for what I hope will be the waning days of Trump's presidency, a preferable alternative to incessantly checking FiveThirtyEight.com every 5 minutes. Carlos Lozada is the Washington Post's nonfiction book reviewer, and this is his survey of approximately 200 nonfiction books written during the Trump era, as an attempt to capture how we are understanding this presidency while it is happening.
Each chapter explores a set of books grouped by theme. Lozada excels in recapping the essential argument or approach of each book, and puts those arguments in context with other books on the same topic. It is an excellent survey of books written during the Trump era, especially if you're trying to figure out which ones you might be interested in reading. Lozada finishes the book with his top 12 recommendations for books that provided him with deeper insight and understanding of this strange time we are living through.
The depth of analysis occasionally feels lacking; Lozada trades depth for breadth. It feels like the book was written in a rush for publication. Nevertheless, it is an excellent survey of commentary on the Trump era and what it means, while we are living through it. It was also an interesting reminder about my own liberal bubble, when I noticed areas where I have read many books or am familiar with the authors, and which areas where I was relatively clueless, though I suppose it's no surprise that I have little interest in tell-all books from insiders of the Trump administration.
The topics that Lozada explores are:
1. White working class and rural voters who drove Trump's 2016 win (e.g. books like Strangers in their Own Land and Hillbilly Elegy)
2. The resistance-- books from the left that explore how to survive the Trump era
3. Conservatives and their writings about Trump
4. Trump's impact on truth
5. Identity Politics - exploring identity politics from marginalized groups in the US and the alt-right
6. #MeToo Movement
7. Chronicles of chaos from within the Trump administration
8. Russian interference
9. Examination of the populism and authoritarian inclinations and the US, and looking to how to preserve and grow a multi-racial democracy in the US, during and after the Trump era
The one area that I wish Lozada had covered was a deeper dive into surveillance capitalism and the role of social media may have played in contributing to the 2016 election results and to the polarization of this country. Perhaps this omission was notable I have been reading more books in this area, and would have been curious to read Lozada's commentary.
October 26, 2022
A great helper in sifting through the books on trump. For those tired of hate-reading about him… but this book’s attempts at understanding aren’t satisfying in themselves—they require additional reading which I’m happy to undertake.
March 26, 2021
4.25 stars.
This was a great overview of the multitude of books written during and/or about the Trump presidency and the political discussions that came along with it (border politics, identity politics, the future of democracy, to name a few). I appreciated Lozada's examinations and critiques of these books, as this book helped me get a more nuanced look at these topics without having to trudge through the "Trump books" myself. Lozada also has a sharp sense of humor that comes through when he discusses the books he finds less than stellar, which I enjoyed. My one critique of this work is that it could have been tied together a bit more, with a bit more synthesis of the different chapters as a cohesive unit, but the within-chapter analysis still made this quite an enjoyable read.
This was a great overview of the multitude of books written during and/or about the Trump presidency and the political discussions that came along with it (border politics, identity politics, the future of democracy, to name a few). I appreciated Lozada's examinations and critiques of these books, as this book helped me get a more nuanced look at these topics without having to trudge through the "Trump books" myself. Lozada also has a sharp sense of humor that comes through when he discusses the books he finds less than stellar, which I enjoyed. My one critique of this work is that it could have been tied together a bit more, with a bit more synthesis of the different chapters as a cohesive unit, but the within-chapter analysis still made this quite an enjoyable read.
December 29, 2020
My final book for 2020 is a book about books--and not just any books, but books about Trump and Trumpism. More than 1,000 such books have been published in the last four years--a lot of them best sellers--with many more on the way. All that's pretty astonishing, especially since Trump himself has said he does not read books.
Carlos Lozada read 150 of those books published 2016-2020 and surveys them here, grouping them by theme. It's part critical analysis--for example, showing how different writers can take the same information, even interviews with the same person, and use them to support different conclusions. He also points out some of the ridiculous things authors say. Mostly though he covers broad themes such as immigration, race, sex, rural America, identity politics, Russia, lying, chaos, etc. and tells us what different writers thought about them.
This book is best suited for political junkies and people who want to be able to converse with them. you could sound smart at a cocktail party if life every returns to normal.
I've read four of the 150 books and frankly I am glad I don't have to read the rest of them. (I did put one on my "to read" list.) I think I will wait for the historians to weigh in a few years from now before reading another book about Trump.
Carlos Lozada read 150 of those books published 2016-2020 and surveys them here, grouping them by theme. It's part critical analysis--for example, showing how different writers can take the same information, even interviews with the same person, and use them to support different conclusions. He also points out some of the ridiculous things authors say. Mostly though he covers broad themes such as immigration, race, sex, rural America, identity politics, Russia, lying, chaos, etc. and tells us what different writers thought about them.
This book is best suited for political junkies and people who want to be able to converse with them. you could sound smart at a cocktail party if life every returns to normal.
I've read four of the 150 books and frankly I am glad I don't have to read the rest of them. (I did put one on my "to read" list.) I think I will wait for the historians to weigh in a few years from now before reading another book about Trump.
January 19, 2021
Not great. I had high hopes. Most of this book reads as a non-scholarly literature review. In other words - one book after the next after the next (after the next). There is also a culture of equivalence between scholarly work and journalist books. Academics and journalists. All modes of 'research' is configured as equal.
These sources are not equivalent.
The best chapter captures the #metoo movement. This is probably because the best writing is completed on this topic. Powerful. Evocative. Moving.
I wanted more. I wanted interpretation and analysis, rather than riding the research of others. Synthesis and originality matter. Neither were effectively revealed in this book.
These sources are not equivalent.
The best chapter captures the #metoo movement. This is probably because the best writing is completed on this topic. Powerful. Evocative. Moving.
I wanted more. I wanted interpretation and analysis, rather than riding the research of others. Synthesis and originality matter. Neither were effectively revealed in this book.
October 27, 2020
In the very least, Mr. Lozada deserves five stars for the herculean/unenviable task of reading 150+ books of the Trump era (especially books by Don Jr lol), so we don't have to. That aside, it's a great review/analysis of those books and fits them in to context with each other, history and the present. Loved the connecting of the dots. Some of the books he discusses I've read and would recommend, like The 5th Risk by Michael Lewis and Woodward's two Trump books. There are a host of others he goes through that I'm looking forward to diving into soon.
January 29, 2021
Fascinating distillation of the many books that have been written about the Trump era. Lozada organizes the books by themes and explains how each book provides evidence for the themes. After surviving the last four years, this book was a reminder of all that has happened...the many controversies that were swept under the rug as the next one emerged. It is a reminder of how we got here and some food for thought on what we need to think about to get out of this mess. I now have another list of books to read.
December 15, 2020
Short review: In What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era, Carlos Lozada, the nonfiction book critic for the Washington Post, deftly divides one hundred and fifty Trump-related nonfiction books published during the last four years into ten easy-to-digest categories. Within these categories, Lozada spends two hundred and fifty pages offering critiques of each book, deciding which ones readers should focus on and the ones they should skip with justifications included, while also tying all books of each section together through a discussion of the common theme of each category he's created, such as books dealing with immigration, 'The Heartland,' studies of authoritarianism and its relation to America, and others. The book is written in a mostly conversational-professorial tone, and readers will find that the pacing is perfect. If you’ve been looking for a guide to the many nonfiction books published during the last four years that deals with Trump, his policies, or the ramifications of either, I highly recommend this book.
Long review: During the past four years, one thing has remained constant in the literary world: books dealing either directly with Trump or the consequences of his policies and their aftereffects have been all the rage, with many of them, if not the majority, ending up either on or at the top of the New York Times Bestseller lists.
When one starts to think about the biggest and most influential volumes that have been published since 2016, the standard bearers have usually been Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, Fear by Bob Woodward, or one of the umpteen memoirs written by former Trump staffers, such as The Room Where It Happened by John Bolton or A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey. But, what about all the other books that have been published in the same time period and have not gotten as much attention, or what about books that dwell solely on the social and historical effects of Trump’s policies while mostly ignoring the man himself? In What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era, the first book by the Washington Post nonfiction book critic Carlos Lozada, such a sentiment is explored, with Lozada acting as a kind of informal guide through around one hundred and fifty titles that have been published since 2016.
Instead of talking about each book individually, Lozada chooses to place them into one of ten categories, with each category focused around one central ‘theme’: studies of the Midwestern heartland and the people who live and dwell there; works that are defined as being ‘resistant’ to Trump or books from ‘The Resistance’; accounts written by GOP members that are either pro-Trump, against Trump, or try to understand where the party goes after him; history and social-based explorations of the southern border wall and immigration in general; books that focus on ‘truth’ and the lack thereof in the Time of Trump; works that are focused on ‘identity politics’ and everything that comes with that term; books that deal with the Me Too movement and related topics; books that Lozada calls ‘The Chaos Chronicles,’ otherwise defined as the types of books, like those written by Woodward and Wolff, that describe what happened during the Trump administration instead of describing the how or why behind it all; case studies in the Russia Investigation and books that deal with Trump’s business ties to Russia; and, finally, books that talk about how authoritarianism either could take hold in America with the way that things are starting to go with our society or how it has already been occurring for decades depending on the color of your skin.
While that might sound like a lot, don’t be intimidated by it—each chapter, with the focus of one theme per chapter, runs no longer than twenty or twenty-five pages, and Lozada’s writing is airy and intellectual at the same time. Most books that are discussed are explored for a few paragraphs at most, with Lozada searching for and critiquing or agreeing with their thesis. Some of the books, especially in longer chapters with heavier subjects like the one that deals with immigration-based books and memoirs, carry more weight to them—he explores the books in that section, for example, as more of a whole rather than book by book, with the overall theme of human loss and suffering being the binding thread that ties them all together.
Now, for a book that only runs for two hundred and fifty pages, one might think that the analysis between the covers is rather skimpy and short. While that technically isn’t wrong, Lozada writes with such clarity and force that long, winded paragraphs aren’t needed to uncover the main point behind the books themselves and whether or not they are either important, now or in the future, or ‘good’ in the sense of being entertaining. The common theme of ‘The Chaos Chronicles’ section, stated directly in the introductory section of the chapter is that, while they may be ‘entertaining’ in a conventional way, books that only detail the what of everything that’s happened in the Trump administration will be of no use in the future other than purely for the historical record. Lozada claims that, on the other hands, the books that will matter in the future, such as Elaine C. Kamarck’s 2016 book Why Presidents Fail: And How They Can Succeed Again, will endure the test of time because they not only recount what has happened since 2016 and the years just before, but how it came to be this way and what it means for the future, the consequences echoing out for decades to come.
Lozada, as one might expect, does not mince his words about what he thinks are good books worth your time and those that are purely fluff (he is not a fan of Fire and Fury and its sketchy journalistic standards), and he does make it clear, albeit between the lines, that he is not a fan of President Trump. In the section dealing with conservative-penned books, he eviscerates Newt Gingrich for becoming a sycophant, using a destructive force like Trumpism to personally profit off the chaos of recent times, and he chides people like Jeff Flake, writing that, while Flake’s 2017 memoir/conservative manifesto can claim on its surface to be a damning assessment of Trump’s early tenure, Flake doesn’t admit to having caused some of the conditions that led to Trump’s rise, chastising him for not being frank and upfront about what the GOP was like during the Obama years and how they ignored Trump’s birtherism conspiracy theories until it was too late.
In most political books, especially ones dealing with political criticism one way or the other, the author taking a side can dilute the entire message and power of the book. With this work, however, Lozada is able to rise above the fray for the most part by not judging the books according to their author’s political whims. He instead chooses to focus on their messages and themes, and such a goal allows him to disavow books like those published by Gingrich and Flake and not come off looking politically biased. This also means that, if a conservative-leaning and/or pro-Trump reader comes upon this book and is nervous about reading it, I would tell them to read it anyway—the literary analysis that Lozada has done of so many recent books is too valuable to miss, and it’s mostly nonpartisan in essence.
One thing this book is not is an in-depth literary critique of all one hundred and fifty books. As previously mentioned, Lozada is able to move from book to book at a rapid click, and the time spent with each tome might come off as surface to some readers, especially those versed in aiming a critical eye at nonfiction and those who came to this book looking for policy critiques of the president and his disciple’s books. But, to me at least, Lozada writes with just enough substance to make his points and get them across quickly, and his prose flows smoothly, with the time flying by as I read and absorbed the messages he was creating out of the themes from each category of books.
This is an important book, and I think it will be taught in classrooms in the future. If not for the content within, at least for the approach that Lozada takes to literary critique with his subdivision of different subjects and overarching themes. I now find myself musing on the various categories as I peruse the current events and history shelves of my local library, thinking in my head which category each newly added book would fit into, and, with that kind of lasting thought coming from Lozada’s work, I can say that he has accomplished exactly what he set out to do with this work: provide some sense of guardrails for understanding the chaos that these last four years has provided.
Long review: During the past four years, one thing has remained constant in the literary world: books dealing either directly with Trump or the consequences of his policies and their aftereffects have been all the rage, with many of them, if not the majority, ending up either on or at the top of the New York Times Bestseller lists.
When one starts to think about the biggest and most influential volumes that have been published since 2016, the standard bearers have usually been Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, Fear by Bob Woodward, or one of the umpteen memoirs written by former Trump staffers, such as The Room Where It Happened by John Bolton or A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey. But, what about all the other books that have been published in the same time period and have not gotten as much attention, or what about books that dwell solely on the social and historical effects of Trump’s policies while mostly ignoring the man himself? In What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era, the first book by the Washington Post nonfiction book critic Carlos Lozada, such a sentiment is explored, with Lozada acting as a kind of informal guide through around one hundred and fifty titles that have been published since 2016.
Instead of talking about each book individually, Lozada chooses to place them into one of ten categories, with each category focused around one central ‘theme’: studies of the Midwestern heartland and the people who live and dwell there; works that are defined as being ‘resistant’ to Trump or books from ‘The Resistance’; accounts written by GOP members that are either pro-Trump, against Trump, or try to understand where the party goes after him; history and social-based explorations of the southern border wall and immigration in general; books that focus on ‘truth’ and the lack thereof in the Time of Trump; works that are focused on ‘identity politics’ and everything that comes with that term; books that deal with the Me Too movement and related topics; books that Lozada calls ‘The Chaos Chronicles,’ otherwise defined as the types of books, like those written by Woodward and Wolff, that describe what happened during the Trump administration instead of describing the how or why behind it all; case studies in the Russia Investigation and books that deal with Trump’s business ties to Russia; and, finally, books that talk about how authoritarianism either could take hold in America with the way that things are starting to go with our society or how it has already been occurring for decades depending on the color of your skin.
While that might sound like a lot, don’t be intimidated by it—each chapter, with the focus of one theme per chapter, runs no longer than twenty or twenty-five pages, and Lozada’s writing is airy and intellectual at the same time. Most books that are discussed are explored for a few paragraphs at most, with Lozada searching for and critiquing or agreeing with their thesis. Some of the books, especially in longer chapters with heavier subjects like the one that deals with immigration-based books and memoirs, carry more weight to them—he explores the books in that section, for example, as more of a whole rather than book by book, with the overall theme of human loss and suffering being the binding thread that ties them all together.
Now, for a book that only runs for two hundred and fifty pages, one might think that the analysis between the covers is rather skimpy and short. While that technically isn’t wrong, Lozada writes with such clarity and force that long, winded paragraphs aren’t needed to uncover the main point behind the books themselves and whether or not they are either important, now or in the future, or ‘good’ in the sense of being entertaining. The common theme of ‘The Chaos Chronicles’ section, stated directly in the introductory section of the chapter is that, while they may be ‘entertaining’ in a conventional way, books that only detail the what of everything that’s happened in the Trump administration will be of no use in the future other than purely for the historical record. Lozada claims that, on the other hands, the books that will matter in the future, such as Elaine C. Kamarck’s 2016 book Why Presidents Fail: And How They Can Succeed Again, will endure the test of time because they not only recount what has happened since 2016 and the years just before, but how it came to be this way and what it means for the future, the consequences echoing out for decades to come.
Lozada, as one might expect, does not mince his words about what he thinks are good books worth your time and those that are purely fluff (he is not a fan of Fire and Fury and its sketchy journalistic standards), and he does make it clear, albeit between the lines, that he is not a fan of President Trump. In the section dealing with conservative-penned books, he eviscerates Newt Gingrich for becoming a sycophant, using a destructive force like Trumpism to personally profit off the chaos of recent times, and he chides people like Jeff Flake, writing that, while Flake’s 2017 memoir/conservative manifesto can claim on its surface to be a damning assessment of Trump’s early tenure, Flake doesn’t admit to having caused some of the conditions that led to Trump’s rise, chastising him for not being frank and upfront about what the GOP was like during the Obama years and how they ignored Trump’s birtherism conspiracy theories until it was too late.
In most political books, especially ones dealing with political criticism one way or the other, the author taking a side can dilute the entire message and power of the book. With this work, however, Lozada is able to rise above the fray for the most part by not judging the books according to their author’s political whims. He instead chooses to focus on their messages and themes, and such a goal allows him to disavow books like those published by Gingrich and Flake and not come off looking politically biased. This also means that, if a conservative-leaning and/or pro-Trump reader comes upon this book and is nervous about reading it, I would tell them to read it anyway—the literary analysis that Lozada has done of so many recent books is too valuable to miss, and it’s mostly nonpartisan in essence.
One thing this book is not is an in-depth literary critique of all one hundred and fifty books. As previously mentioned, Lozada is able to move from book to book at a rapid click, and the time spent with each tome might come off as surface to some readers, especially those versed in aiming a critical eye at nonfiction and those who came to this book looking for policy critiques of the president and his disciple’s books. But, to me at least, Lozada writes with just enough substance to make his points and get them across quickly, and his prose flows smoothly, with the time flying by as I read and absorbed the messages he was creating out of the themes from each category of books.
This is an important book, and I think it will be taught in classrooms in the future. If not for the content within, at least for the approach that Lozada takes to literary critique with his subdivision of different subjects and overarching themes. I now find myself musing on the various categories as I peruse the current events and history shelves of my local library, thinking in my head which category each newly added book would fit into, and, with that kind of lasting thought coming from Lozada’s work, I can say that he has accomplished exactly what he set out to do with this work: provide some sense of guardrails for understanding the chaos that these last four years has provided.
April 7, 2021
Coming to this book in April 2021, three months past the Trump presidency and, hopefully, the end of the "Trump Era," I was reluctant to read Lozada's survey of 150 some-odd Trump books, fearing a meta, and therefore more-detached, level of hysteria and sanctimony – which, along with Trump's lies and the death of nuance, constitute the four horsemen of today's political discourse. Instead, through synthesizing the sheer number of varying perspectives, Lozada is able to highlight the recurring themes, examine the apparent conflicts, and dispel the self-serving ambitions in these narratives. Only a few books come out unscathed, although Lozada consistently and fairly lays out the books' arguments before poking holes in them.
The title is not a question, and so the reader does not come away with singular answers. Was Trump elected because of class and cultural conflict or systemic racism and sexism? The answer seems to be yes and no. Did our institutions hold? Yes and no. Did we descend into fascism? Yes and no. The only thing that seems clear from this meta analysis of the narratives that have shaped the way we understand the Trump era is that we need new narratives that don't reduce the complexity of the world we find ourselves in.
The title is not a question, and so the reader does not come away with singular answers. Was Trump elected because of class and cultural conflict or systemic racism and sexism? The answer seems to be yes and no. Did our institutions hold? Yes and no. Did we descend into fascism? Yes and no. The only thing that seems clear from this meta analysis of the narratives that have shaped the way we understand the Trump era is that we need new narratives that don't reduce the complexity of the world we find ourselves in.
December 7, 2020
When we want to enforce the idea that you can find the truth if you read and become aware we find a friend in Carlos Lozada. Anyone wanting a wonderful analysis of many of the books written about our current circumstances in the Trump presidency must read this book.
March 1, 2021
A Washington Post book reviewer takes on the task of reading 150 books written about the Trump years. Interesting analyses, looking at themes and how well writers/journalists capture and explain what was happening. I've read some of the books, and agree with his analyses. But there are also others I want to read.
Written in the summer of 2020 -- there have been a lot of books since then, and I know there will be more...
Written in the summer of 2020 -- there have been a lot of books since then, and I know there will be more...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 224 reviews