All or Nothing by Michael Wolff
All or Nothing takes readers on a journey accompanying Donald Trump on his return to power as only Michael Wolff, the foremost chronicler of the Trump era, can do it. As Trump cruelly and swiftly dispatches his opponents, heaps fire and fury on the prosecutors and judges who are pursuing him, and mocks and belittles anyone in his way, including the president of the United States, this becomes not just another election but perhaps, both sides say, the last election. The stakes could not be clearer: Either the establishment destroys Donald Trump, or he destroys the establishment.
By Lauren
Just three months after the November 2024 US elections that installed President Donald Trump into the White House for a second term, journalist and Trump biographer Michael Wolff is back with his fourth take on the Trump presidency.
His Trump trilogy began with 2019’s Fire and Fury, about Trump’s first tumultuous nine months in the Oval Office, followed by 2020’s Siege: Trump Under Fire, which looked at the divisive leader’s political and legal woes. Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency (2022) follows Trump in his last days in office after losing the presidency (and arguably, says the author, his mind) to Joe Biden.
But with Trump back in the White House, Michael Wolff picked up his proverbial pen once again to chronicle 2024’s Trump campaign, which included two assassination attempts, four criminal trials, numerous civil lawsuits, new friends (Elon Musk anybody?) and new (and old) enemies.
“In Wolff’s books,” writes journalist Nicolas Niarchos in The New York Times of the author’s sources, “quicksilver sources speak on condition of anonymity, their fired-off texts find their way into printed text, verbatim, alongside secret recordings of donor meetings and Trump’s ramblings. Sprinkled throughout are moments of fierce intelligence and genuine lucidity.”
Although Trump staffers have taken to social media to call the work “fiction” and question Wolff’s facts, Wolff’s personal access to Trump’s inner circle creates a behind-the-scenes picture of a president whose behavior, says its publisher Crown, “is so unimaginable, so uncontrolled, so unmindful of cause and effect, that it defeats all the structures and logic of civic life…. This is not just a story about politics: It is a vivid expose of the demons, discord, and anarchy—the fire, fury, and future—of American life under Trump.”
All or Nothing is a frighteningly gripping read for our frighteningly gripping times.
For more books on current affairs, check our Politics & Current Affairs highlights and our Context on Trump highlights.
