Bilious, querulous, and preposterous: everything a Trumpian apologia is meant to be, suited for true believers alone.
The grand champion of “alternative facts” defends her years as one of Donald Trump’s primary enablers.
Conway was infamous as a Trump spokesperson for a range of emotions that ran from contempt to rage, and she had a knack for contemptuously shrugging off every excess committed by her boss and his gang. This memoir demonstrates all of that and more. Snarky from the get-go—“By every imaginable metric, I should have been a Democrat….Probably a man-hater, too”—she writes with abundant self-congratulation about having risen above her blue-collar past to embark upon “the wildest adventure of my life,” namely tossing out alternative facts while attempting to explain away the many misdeeds of the Trump White House. Unsurprisingly given her track record, Conway has plenty of venom to go around: She despises Steve Bannon (“No one…did less work—less actual work—while he was there”), Paul Manafort (“He literally fell asleep during my PowerPoint on how to close the gender gap with Hillary”), and Jared Kushner (“He misread the Constitution in one crucial respect, thinking that all power not given to the federal government was reserved to him”). Her undisguised rage lands hardest on her husband, George Conway, an erstwhile Trump supporter who began to tweet, a couple of years in, anti-Trump views that she took personally—without, it appears, ever considering that Trump was manifestly unqualified for the job. On her offending husband, the author has dark thoughts aplenty: “Democracy will survive. America will survive. George and I may not survive.” Of course, she has plenty of jabs for Joe Biden and other Democrats. As for Trump, it’s nothing but a lovefest: His people may have led him astray, she growls, but “he always put America first.”
Bilious, querulous, and preposterous: everything a Trumpian apologia is meant to be, suited for true believers alone.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982187-34-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.
A carefully curated personal portrait.
First ladies’ roles have evolved significantly in recent decades. Their memoirs typically reflect a spectrum of ambition and interests, offering insights into their values and personal lives. Melania Trump, however, stands out as exceptionally private and elusive. Her ultra-lean account attempts to shed light on her public duties, initiatives, and causes as first lady, and it defends certain actions like her controversial “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket. The statement was directed at the media, not the border situation, she claims. Yet the book provides scant detail about her personal orbit or day-to-day interactions. The memoir opens with her well-known Slovenian origin story, successful modeling career, and whirlwind romance with Donald Trump, culminating in their 2005 marriage, followed by a snapshot of Election Day 2016: “Each time we were together that day, I was impressed by his calm.…This man is remarkably confident under pressure.” Once in the White House, Melania Trump describes her functions and numerous public events at home and abroad, which she asserts were more accomplished than media representations suggested. However, she rarely shares any personal interactions beyond close family ties, notably her affection for her son, Barron, and her sister, Ines. And of course she lavishes praise on her husband. Minimal anecdotes about White House or cabinet staff are included, and she carefully defuses her rumored tensions with Trump’s adult children, blandly stating, “While we may share the same last name, each of us is distinct with our own aspirations and paths to follow.” Although Melania’s desire to support causes related to children’s and women’s welfare feels authentic, the overall tenor of her memoir seems aimed at painting a glimmering portrait of her husband and her role, likely with an eye toward the forthcoming election.
A slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781510782693
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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