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Too Famous: The Rich, The Powerful, The Wishful, The Damned, The Notorious – Twenty Years of Columns, Essays and Reporting
TOO FAMOUS collects pieces Michael Wolff has written as a columnist for New York, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, GQ and The Hollywood Reporter, and adds several new ones. Written over a 20-year period, the book spans that moment in popular culture when personal attention became one of the world's most valuable commodities, and ending with Donald Trump, fame's most hyperbolic exponent.Some of these pieces exist in the amber of a particular news moment, some as character portraits - as colourful now as when they were written - and some as lasting observations about human nature and folly. The common ground all of these thrilling stories share is that everyone in this book is a creature of, or creation of, the media. They don't exist as who we see them as, and who they want to be, without the media.
411 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 19, 2021
197 people are currently reading
1953 people want to read
About the author
Michael Wolff
31 books614 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Michael Wolff is an American author, essayist, and journalist, and a regular columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ. He has received two National Magazine Awards, a Mirror Award, and has authored seven books, including Burn Rate (1998) about his own dot-com company, and The Man Who Owns the News (2008), a biography of Rupert Murdoch. He co-founded the news aggregation website Newser and is a former editor of Adweek.
In January 2018, Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was published, containing unflattering descriptions of behavior by U.S. President Donald Trump, chaotic interactions among the White House senior staff, and derogatory comments about the Trump family by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
Michael Wolff is an American author, essayist, and journalist, and a regular columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ. He has received two National Magazine Awards, a Mirror Award, and has authored seven books, including Burn Rate (1998) about his own dot-com company, and The Man Who Owns the News (2008), a biography of Rupert Murdoch. He co-founded the news aggregation website Newser and is a former editor of Adweek.
In January 2018, Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was published, containing unflattering descriptions of behavior by U.S. President Donald Trump, chaotic interactions among the White House senior staff, and derogatory comments about the Trump family by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
October 26, 2021
Mostly a rehash of previously published material which makes this book a money trap for the reader and a money generating boondoggle for the author. His reporting on Ronan Farrow was biased and left critical facts out of the piece. Basically I was bored with the book and sorry I paid for it. Do not recommend.
October 23, 2021
Gossip and not a person or thing in there that I would like to know about. Most are just a bunch of jerks.
November 12, 2021
The book started out OK with the stories of Rudy G's exploits, but not nearly as fun as the previous book. After that, it started sputtering out with endless chapters on so called famous people I'd never even heard of and started skimming a lot to finish. Even the Epstein chapter was dull, I didn't think that anything on Epstein could be boring, but it was. Library only.
December 14, 2021
Nasty
Mr Wolff seems to have nothing but contempt and disgust for the subjects of his book, and revels in malicious glee in his descriptions of these people, some of whom I am aware and others of whom I know nothing. The only person who apparently escaped his contemptuous commentary is JFK, Jr. I did not like this book at all. Nearly everyone described and the author himself seem to be exceeding unpleasant despite their wealth and notorietIy. I'm amazed any of these people talked to him; wonder if they still do, and what they think of his opinions and descriptions of them. I'm grateful not to live in the world of the rich and famous.
Mr Wolff seems to have nothing but contempt and disgust for the subjects of his book, and revels in malicious glee in his descriptions of these people, some of whom I am aware and others of whom I know nothing. The only person who apparently escaped his contemptuous commentary is JFK, Jr. I did not like this book at all. Nearly everyone described and the author himself seem to be exceeding unpleasant despite their wealth and notorietIy. I'm amazed any of these people talked to him; wonder if they still do, and what they think of his opinions and descriptions of them. I'm grateful not to live in the world of the rich and famous.
November 27, 2021
Mostly reprints, a three-star book for me overall. Some of these pieces are 20 years old. But I'm giving an extra star for the final piece in the collection, which is an astonishing account of the daily life and attempts at damage control of Jeffrey Epstein shortly before his second arrest. The wealth! The lying! The omelets!
wish-list
October 17, 2021According to a report from Insider, former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon had a conversation with billionaire child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein where he admitted that, during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, he feared Epsten would run to the press with stories about the New York real estate mogul.
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/16/stev...
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/16/stev...
October 20, 2022
Really 3.5 stars or so, per my more detailed review here . Bumped up to 4 because I think several of the low-star reviewers had it too low for the wrong reasons, so a half-star bump upward.
December 3, 2023
Much less interesting than I expected.
Read
November 4, 2021Finished.
December 16, 2021
Sometimes enjoyable but mostly just mindless gossip.
November 27, 2022
At first I was liking this book. It felt like a sort of Eminent Victorians for the 21st century -- cleverly written snarky short biographies. I liked Mr. Wolff's other book, "Television Is The New Television," and I learned a few things about the dysfunction of the Trump White House from "Fire and Fury." I enjoy Mr. Wolff's writing style. But it's hard if not impossible to do Eminent Victorians today. Famous people today, particularly the ones selected here, are already so self-parodic that no amount of irony and clever writing can send them up properly. So it just came off for me as malicious and mean spirited. Sometimes I'd think that Mr. Wolff was trying to find something positive to say about one of his subjects, but the few postive things were just straw men, set up so that he could knock them down two sentences later. I'm not a fan of most of the people profiled in this book, but I didn't need Mr. Wolff's snark to be able to reach my conclusions about them, and in the moments where he was able to make me feel some Schadenfreude, my next feeling was always shame and regret that I let him bring me down to his level. Then when I got to the final essay about Jeffrey Epstein, my unhappiness with the book went up another order of magnitude, because the portrait of Epstein is largely positive. Wow. Yes, I undestand that it is meant to be ironic and that the portrayal of the supportive meeting in which Steve Bannon, Ehud Barak, Epstein's lawyer and a crisis management PR person talk about ways to make Epstein's image more postive can be read as second degree sarcasm intended to draw you in so that the mockery is more intense when you realize that you have been had. But you can't do that with a character like Epstein. I'm sure that a lot of the unsavory things that have been said about Epstein are untrue or exaggerated, but I'm convinced of the essential truth that he was a flim flammer and blackmailer who took advantage of hundreds of young women, many of them underage, and offered them up like candy to his rich friends. I can't condone a book that offers sympathy for such a person, even if it tries to take it back with a "just kidding" ironic tone.
June 5, 2023
My first Wolff book is a collection of articles written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and other periodicals. Early on Wolff acknowledges his liberal leanings and so I was a bit reticent. I find the pomposity of the extreme left to be as tiresome as the vitriol of the extreme right.
I was pleasantly surprised. I found most of his articles to be engaging, insightful and thought-provoking. There were only a couple that caused me to think: ok. I get it. You know big words, can wow with both French and Latin, and can name drop w the best of them. But that was only twice. (Thus the 4 stars instead of 5.)
I was impressed w Mr. Wolff’s writing. He is witty and clever. His timing is flawless. I am looking forward to some of his political works. I am drawn in by his humanity and his nuanced irony. I highly recommend him.
I was pleasantly surprised. I found most of his articles to be engaging, insightful and thought-provoking. There were only a couple that caused me to think: ok. I get it. You know big words, can wow with both French and Latin, and can name drop w the best of them. But that was only twice. (Thus the 4 stars instead of 5.)
I was impressed w Mr. Wolff’s writing. He is witty and clever. His timing is flawless. I am looking forward to some of his political works. I am drawn in by his humanity and his nuanced irony. I highly recommend him.
Read
June 7, 2023“I could call up Arianna and confirm the best story I know about these dinner parties. But I don’t want it not to be true. I tell my children this story as an example of savvy and pluck. (I have heard it from three different people.)
Arianna set about having dinner parties, inviting the most prestigious New Yorkers who would come and, at an appointed hour, she would deliver an impromptu toast, fifteen minutes or more of sweeping, seamless, knowing, witty observations, the likes of which no awkward table in New York had ever heard before. Grown men, those attracted to ambitious women anyway, swooned. When, ultimately, it got out that these toasts were written and rehearsed, that only added to the allure. Indeed, this is what I tell my children: it’s not the effortlessness but the effort that goes into making it effortless. In praise of artifice, if you will.”
Arianna set about having dinner parties, inviting the most prestigious New Yorkers who would come and, at an appointed hour, she would deliver an impromptu toast, fifteen minutes or more of sweeping, seamless, knowing, witty observations, the likes of which no awkward table in New York had ever heard before. Grown men, those attracted to ambitious women anyway, swooned. When, ultimately, it got out that these toasts were written and rehearsed, that only added to the allure. Indeed, this is what I tell my children: it’s not the effortlessness but the effort that goes into making it effortless. In praise of artifice, if you will.”
November 8, 2021
Witty and cruel and funny
December 15, 2021
In which Wolff enjoys gossiping about celebrities from the political world. Although he claims in the introduction that his goal is to explore celebrity seekers, to understand why they fly like moths to the flame of public attention, the book is really mostly reprints about political celebrities that include some unflattering bits and his own opinion abut them. The pieces aren't reworked to address any theme, really, and the book doesn't even have a concluding chapter to draw lessons from the excerpts.
It's just interesting gossip about people and how their celebrity brought them low or lifted them high. The people he talks about are interesting and he writes well enough. But really the one thing I would conclude after reading the book is that Wolff himself shows one benefit of celebrity, you can make money from it.
It's just interesting gossip about people and how their celebrity brought them low or lifted them high. The people he talks about are interesting and he writes well enough. But really the one thing I would conclude after reading the book is that Wolff himself shows one benefit of celebrity, you can make money from it.
May 31, 2022
Honestly, I would like to find one good thing to say about this book but I have none. It's basically cheap gossip that tells us that the powerful people are bad and live lives of cruelty and self-indulgence.
Do what I didn't and skip this book.
Do what I didn't and skip this book.
January 13, 2025
Pile of trash from a leftie nobody who writes an entire book pissing on people who've done infinitely more than him. I gave up just before the halfway mark. Truly an embarrassing piece of work.
December 1, 2022
I received a copy of this book for free in a Goodreads giveaway.
This is a collection of essays about various famous people and the various ways they fell from grace. It often felt like a bunch of gossip organized into essay form, and some of them are about people I've never even heard of. There are some essays that try to summarize a person's entire life and notoriety in the span of five pages or so, which felt far too brief. There are often people's names being mentioned at such a rapid clip that it was hard to really keep track of it all. This just seemed like a collection of essays that have nothing in common other than attacking powerful famous people that the author often has a personal connection to, which made me doubt the impartiality of all of this. The book also felt overly long, despite being under 350 pages. I don't know if that's because of the size of the text, or because a lot of these essays just go on and on with mentions of famous people's names and the gross things many of them did, without a lot of analysis. There's no conclusion to this collection, just one long essay about Jeffrey Epstein where there's a lot of dialogue that seems like it was written for a screenplay, not something that the author actually heard in real life. A conclusion would have helped tie the essay collection together and summarize the point of all this, but lacking that, it was hard to come away from this book with any sense of what the author was driving at, other than that famous people often do terrible things, and that media and politics have both encouraged these famous people to seek even more fame and power and also amplified their wrongdoings much more. But I don't think those are particularly interesting conclusions, nor did it require this much text to back that up.
This is a collection of essays about various famous people and the various ways they fell from grace. It often felt like a bunch of gossip organized into essay form, and some of them are about people I've never even heard of. There are some essays that try to summarize a person's entire life and notoriety in the span of five pages or so, which felt far too brief. There are often people's names being mentioned at such a rapid clip that it was hard to really keep track of it all. This just seemed like a collection of essays that have nothing in common other than attacking powerful famous people that the author often has a personal connection to, which made me doubt the impartiality of all of this. The book also felt overly long, despite being under 350 pages. I don't know if that's because of the size of the text, or because a lot of these essays just go on and on with mentions of famous people's names and the gross things many of them did, without a lot of analysis. There's no conclusion to this collection, just one long essay about Jeffrey Epstein where there's a lot of dialogue that seems like it was written for a screenplay, not something that the author actually heard in real life. A conclusion would have helped tie the essay collection together and summarize the point of all this, but lacking that, it was hard to come away from this book with any sense of what the author was driving at, other than that famous people often do terrible things, and that media and politics have both encouraged these famous people to seek even more fame and power and also amplified their wrongdoings much more. But I don't think those are particularly interesting conclusions, nor did it require this much text to back that up.
February 24, 2022
Back in the late 90s I DEVOURED every Michael Wolff column in New York magazine. They had an energy and a bite to them that felt juicy and delicious to read.
It may be why the best sections of this book are the ones that harken back to it: The Rise of Fox 1, and 2. Gore in the 2000 primaries before he debated Bush. Tina Brown and Harry upon the publication of their unauthorized “Come to America” bio.
The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein is what has now become classic fly-on-the-wall Wolff; the part where he quotes everyone deciding there is no news outlet or writer who will take on the story leaves one to wonder just what they thought of him sitting in, or what he said to convinced them to allow it. And the Giuliani chapter was illuminating, to think he could have been deemed both completely off-the-rails and yet influenced the Mueller investigation as much as he apparently did.
But the gold, surprisingly, was among the (disappointingly) short Media People chapters, this one of Interview magazine’s editor Ingrid Sischy, where he identifies this low-readership yet vastly influential monthly as being effectively insouciant toward its access to celebrity; that Vanity Fair and its ilk was providing access in a showy “public” way whereas Interview just sort of did it’s thing in what felt like an insular way.
I’d prefer to give this 2.5 stars because the remainder includes things we already know (the Jared Kushner/Bannon chapters, most of the Media People ones) and I completely bailed on the Boris Johnson ones.
It may be why the best sections of this book are the ones that harken back to it: The Rise of Fox 1, and 2. Gore in the 2000 primaries before he debated Bush. Tina Brown and Harry upon the publication of their unauthorized “Come to America” bio.
The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein is what has now become classic fly-on-the-wall Wolff; the part where he quotes everyone deciding there is no news outlet or writer who will take on the story leaves one to wonder just what they thought of him sitting in, or what he said to convinced them to allow it. And the Giuliani chapter was illuminating, to think he could have been deemed both completely off-the-rails and yet influenced the Mueller investigation as much as he apparently did.
But the gold, surprisingly, was among the (disappointingly) short Media People chapters, this one of Interview magazine’s editor Ingrid Sischy, where he identifies this low-readership yet vastly influential monthly as being effectively insouciant toward its access to celebrity; that Vanity Fair and its ilk was providing access in a showy “public” way whereas Interview just sort of did it’s thing in what felt like an insular way.
I’d prefer to give this 2.5 stars because the remainder includes things we already know (the Jared Kushner/Bannon chapters, most of the Media People ones) and I completely bailed on the Boris Johnson ones.
January 17, 2022
The introduction was the best part: hypothesising that being famous (once an upper middle class pursuit) had been democratised with the invention of social media, that there were many more famous people today, albeit famous in their little fiefdoms. And then Wolff goes on to prove that point when he titles many of his following chapters with the first names of people who I didn't know a thing about - nor care.
Most of the pieces are circa 2000 to 2015. He dropped off the face of the earth after Trump was elected, only to write numerous scathing books about him (full disclosure, I've read none of them). The 2020 pieces seem to come from an Audible book which is not the same animal as 1) a commissioned magazine article or 2) a published book. I would assume that he has no further connections to the famous, political or celebrity, as he's probably burned all his bridges. Calling people fat and/or old as a supreme insult would land him the title of 'bitchy' if he'd been a woman. (As an aside, I wonder if his success writing about Trump can be more attributed to people's loathing of Trump than any sort of trust or talent in him)
Mostly this book was a confirmation of things I read about Matt Taibbi's Hate Inc and Freddie DeBoer's substack: the pre-internet media hedonism days, and the brief period (now over) when the media crowned the next presidential candidate based on his likeability and other factors they invented and reported.
Most of the pieces are circa 2000 to 2015. He dropped off the face of the earth after Trump was elected, only to write numerous scathing books about him (full disclosure, I've read none of them). The 2020 pieces seem to come from an Audible book which is not the same animal as 1) a commissioned magazine article or 2) a published book. I would assume that he has no further connections to the famous, political or celebrity, as he's probably burned all his bridges. Calling people fat and/or old as a supreme insult would land him the title of 'bitchy' if he'd been a woman. (As an aside, I wonder if his success writing about Trump can be more attributed to people's loathing of Trump than any sort of trust or talent in him)
Mostly this book was a confirmation of things I read about Matt Taibbi's Hate Inc and Freddie DeBoer's substack: the pre-internet media hedonism days, and the brief period (now over) when the media crowned the next presidential candidate based on his likeability and other factors they invented and reported.
November 23, 2022
A gossipy so called insider to digs the dirt on a number of folks, some well known, some know only to select groups that probably only Wolff and such are ingrained in.
Most of these are forgettable, some interesting. Trump of course high on the list and interesting info here on supposedly an informal sit down probably off the record. But of course with Trump nothing can be deemed off the record. And hopefully not a spoiler here; seem Prez Donald is more enthralled and interested on his theatrics and Svengali influence from his pulpit, er..podium in front of his people. He is not that engaged on the real issues at had it seems. Surprise.
The ending of the book concludes with a fairly extensive behind the scenes with another well knowns and since passed celebrity, Jeffrey Epstein. This I found rather fascinating as somehow Wolff gets ahold of a lot of detail on Steve Bannons' interacting with Jeffrey in trying to influence a rebuild of his public persona. He coached him on a video type interview in which he tries to explain his simple role as an advisor to the super wealthy. And dismiss his notoriety as a predator of young women. He certainly has a lot to say and it is rather interesting. The conclusion coming with his his demise behind bars and leaves the mystery element well intact.
Most of these are forgettable, some interesting. Trump of course high on the list and interesting info here on supposedly an informal sit down probably off the record. But of course with Trump nothing can be deemed off the record. And hopefully not a spoiler here; seem Prez Donald is more enthralled and interested on his theatrics and Svengali influence from his pulpit, er..podium in front of his people. He is not that engaged on the real issues at had it seems. Surprise.
The ending of the book concludes with a fairly extensive behind the scenes with another well knowns and since passed celebrity, Jeffrey Epstein. This I found rather fascinating as somehow Wolff gets ahold of a lot of detail on Steve Bannons' interacting with Jeffrey in trying to influence a rebuild of his public persona. He coached him on a video type interview in which he tries to explain his simple role as an advisor to the super wealthy. And dismiss his notoriety as a predator of young women. He certainly has a lot to say and it is rather interesting. The conclusion coming with his his demise behind bars and leaves the mystery element well intact.
October 25, 2025
Michael Wolff’s Too Famous is a sharp, fearless, and darkly entertaining dissection of modern fame and the machinery that sustains it. Known for his unflinching political exposés, Wolff turns his signature wit and incisive eye toward the spectacle of celebrity and power, offering readers a masterclass in how notoriety corrodes truth and ambition alike.
Through a blend of new material and two decades of reporting, Wolff takes readers deep inside the egos, manipulations, and self-inflicted implosions of some of the most recognized figures in media and politics. From Tucker Carlson and Harvey Weinstein to Hillary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch, the profiles read like psychological autopsies of public obsession brilliant portraits of individuals consumed by the very fame they chased.
What makes Too Famous stand out is its relevance. It’s not just about personalities but about the cultural addiction to spectacle and influence, a lens through which we can understand our era’s politics, media, and moral contradictions. Wolff’s writing is razor-edged yet enthralling, turning gossip into insight and scandal into substance.
Through a blend of new material and two decades of reporting, Wolff takes readers deep inside the egos, manipulations, and self-inflicted implosions of some of the most recognized figures in media and politics. From Tucker Carlson and Harvey Weinstein to Hillary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch, the profiles read like psychological autopsies of public obsession brilliant portraits of individuals consumed by the very fame they chased.
What makes Too Famous stand out is its relevance. It’s not just about personalities but about the cultural addiction to spectacle and influence, a lens through which we can understand our era’s politics, media, and moral contradictions. Wolff’s writing is razor-edged yet enthralling, turning gossip into insight and scandal into substance.
May 24, 2022
I can't imagine why I downloaded this book on the Kindle app on my phone, probably for MRT reading (our local 'subway' service here in Singapore). Probably during one of my 'disgusted with Trump and all his cohorts' moods. And it served that purpose pleasingly well, covering not only the family but also a large number of their key enablers and donors (and surprisingly, critics) as well as a potluck assortment of other well-knowns that the author journalist had the 'pleasure' of getting to know during his career ('President Jared', Rudy, Steve Bannon, Tucker, Ronan, Harvey, Jann Hitch, Arianna, Judith, Tina, Ingrid, Rupert, Robert Ailes, Hillary, Cuomo, Gore, Boris, Epstein....). So if you recognise these names and are looking for gossipy insider stories and some surprises about who really thinks what about whom, it's an entertaining read. But such an unusual read for me that the only category of my usual reads it meets is: 'American history'. Ain't that the truth!
(Now back to some serious stuff: Serhii Plokhy's excellent The Gates of Europe.)
(Now back to some serious stuff: Serhii Plokhy's excellent The Gates of Europe.)
October 10, 2023
A collection of essays that may have been misassembled by some publisher, in hopes of gathering a rogue’s gallery of unpleasant people together under one cover. The biggest problem for me was that the context for each essay was often wildly out of date and/or relevance. And while you have folks profiled in the 2020s, still stinking up the room (Jeffrey Epstein, Jann Wenner’s latest screwup), there are people included who seem so outdated that I had no idea why he or she was Too Famous: Andrew Cuomo? Ingrid Sischy?
So we have a mashup of infamous or at least sketchy celebrities, vividly dissected by the author, spread over 25 years, and a feeling sometimes of dubious reportage, such as the lengthy conversations over Epstein’s dinner table without any corroboration. Did he reconstruct it secondhand? Did he smuggle in a tape recorder? Given the subject, who really cares? Throw in Steve Brannon at that table, and you have the source of nightmares.
So we have a mashup of infamous or at least sketchy celebrities, vividly dissected by the author, spread over 25 years, and a feeling sometimes of dubious reportage, such as the lengthy conversations over Epstein’s dinner table without any corroboration. Did he reconstruct it secondhand? Did he smuggle in a tape recorder? Given the subject, who really cares? Throw in Steve Brannon at that table, and you have the source of nightmares.
December 29, 2021
(Audiobook) Wolff jumped to general fame with his series of tell-all books about Trump. Yet, he is more established as a writer for the New York Times and various NYC-based publications, especially in his documentations of the rich, famous and powerful in NYC elite circles. This work is a compilation of those essays. He still brings up Trump and his family, although he is perhaps more complimentary and straight-forward about Jared Kushner than others works out there.
Yet, much of this work is geared towards the elite who are the subject of these articles. The general, non-NYC reader might find some of this interesting, but the struggles of NYC elite struggling with fame is not an easily relatable concept. Plus, some credibility issues with his previous works will diminish the impact of this work.
Worth a read, but not the great compilation of essays out there.
Yet, much of this work is geared towards the elite who are the subject of these articles. The general, non-NYC reader might find some of this interesting, but the struggles of NYC elite struggling with fame is not an easily relatable concept. Plus, some credibility issues with his previous works will diminish the impact of this work.
Worth a read, but not the great compilation of essays out there.
November 26, 2021
An amusing if inessential collection of previously published essays and articles profiling mostly media personalities with a couple of chapters set aside for the Trumps and Jeffrey Epstein. The prose is engaging and Wolff doesn't pull his punches--in the foreword to the book he wonders why people even let him interview them since they know what kinds of pieces he writes. Some of it veers philosophical; the chapter on Tucker Carlson has some insightful musings about the nature of the right-wing media ecosystem and its propensity to sell diet pills. Some is very inside baseball, such as the chapter on Judith Regan after her ouster from News Corp. following the O.J. Simpson tell-all "If I Did It" and the associated debacle.
So, like I said, inessential, but I had fun.
So, like I said, inessential, but I had fun.
March 2, 2022
I didn't expect to enjoy this book, given its mediocre reputation and off-putting title.
Fortunately, the subjects of this book are mostly "the powerful" and not the other things in the subtitle. Over half of them are well-known politicians and their henchmen. I'm not sure who "the wishful" refers to, and "the rich, notorious and damned" seems apt for only one of the subjects: Jeffrey Epstein. Almost all of the subjects earned their fame, so the title is very misleading.
If you like Wolff's breezy writing style, and you haven't already read these previously published articles, then the book is worth reading. A few of the articles were about people who didn't interest me at all, but's easy to just skip past them.
Fortunately, the subjects of this book are mostly "the powerful" and not the other things in the subtitle. Over half of them are well-known politicians and their henchmen. I'm not sure who "the wishful" refers to, and "the rich, notorious and damned" seems apt for only one of the subjects: Jeffrey Epstein. Almost all of the subjects earned their fame, so the title is very misleading.
If you like Wolff's breezy writing style, and you haven't already read these previously published articles, then the book is worth reading. A few of the articles were about people who didn't interest me at all, but's easy to just skip past them.
February 24, 2025
I see how the book is rated and I must skew the curve upward! When I first read the review, I was intrigued! When I read the book, I was hooked and never wanted it to end! This book captures some of the most controversial figures and provides a fairly accurate depiction of them. None of the written portraits are cartoonish in their portrayal. There is some humor in the understatement of some profiles. Michael Wolff truly captures these individuals and I practically use this as my “textbook “ for some discussions. What’s fascinating is that most of these portrayals NEED updates due to how much has happened and how quickly circumstances change. I couldn’t put this down and, when I did, I couldn’t remember who took it, but the memory stays alive in these unforgettable pages!
January 5, 2022
Having thoroughly enjoyed Landslide, I found this one to be less intriguing. Wolff draws from old and new material to describe profiles of famous and infamous characters. He divides the book into 7 sections. Individuals include Robert Murdoch, Boris Johnson and Jeffrey Epstein. The rest include groups of people like Media people, Tucker was the only one I was really familiar with, Fox News people, and the Defeated, Hillary, Cuomo and Gore. My favourite section was the group of people under the Kakistocracy. I had to look that one up. It means government by the least competent or suitable citizens. In this group, he includes Jared, Rudy, Bannon and Trump.
August 13, 2025
*Audiobook via Spotify Premium*
Fascinating book. Each chapter is about different people the author has experience with and can share those interactions along with explaining why we are obsessed with them. From the Clintons (Hillary specifically) to Trump, Al Gore to Jeffery Epstein… so interesting to get a true inside scoop.
I went in thinking this book was going to be unbiased. It very much is written in the author’s voice and their perspective. His thoughts and opinions are clear. Just know that when going in.
Fascinating book. Each chapter is about different people the author has experience with and can share those interactions along with explaining why we are obsessed with them. From the Clintons (Hillary specifically) to Trump, Al Gore to Jeffery Epstein… so interesting to get a true inside scoop.
I went in thinking this book was going to be unbiased. It very much is written in the author’s voice and their perspective. His thoughts and opinions are clear. Just know that when going in.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews