Rage

by Bob Woodward

Overview

Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest.

Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans.

In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.”

At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president.

Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making.

Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents.

Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.”

Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982131739
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	608,647
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Bob Woodward is the author of three consecutive #1 New York Times bestsellers on President Trump—Fear (2018), Rage (2020), and Peril (2021) with Robert Costa—and an audiobook of 20 interviews with Trump. He has authored 22 bestselling books, 15 of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers, covering every president from Nixon to Biden.

Hometown:

Washington, D.C.

Date of Birth:

March 26, 1943

Place of Birth:

Geneva, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Yale University, 1965

Editorial Reviews

09/18/2020

Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Woodward explains in his latest book on Donald Trump (after Fear) that he gained access to the presidential family through flattery. This is a recurring theme throughout an account that reads more like a fluff piece than objective journalism. Woodward takes great care to praise the intellect of senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as ousted secretary of defense James Mattis and disgraced secretary of state Rex Tillerson. He reserves the most pages for Trump's meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and their ongoing platitudes toward each other. Readers may be interested in learning more about the Trump administration's attempts to sabotage the Mueller Report, Sen. Lindsay Graham's efforts to become a yes-man, and Kushner's running the presidency behind the scenes, as well as Trump downplaying the threat of COVID-19, as recently reported in the media. Toward the end, the book veers into Sinophobia on both Trump and Woodward's part. Woodward's final line states that Trump is unfit for the job, yet readers will be reminded of his open willingness to appease the presidential family, and by extension his employer, The Washington Post, and its owner Jeff Bezos, to gain access, which ultimately lessens his credibility. VERDICT Similar to Woodward's previous book, Fear, only purchase for initial demand.—William Varick, New York

Library Journal

★ 2020-09-19
That thing in the air that is deadlier than even your “strenuous flus”? Trump knew—and did nothing about it.

The big news from veteran reporter Woodward’s follow-up to Fear has been widely reported: Trump was fully aware at the beginning of 2020 that a pandemic loomed and chose to downplay it, causing an untold number of deaths and crippling the economy. His excuse that he didn’t want to cause a panic doesn’t fly given that he trades in fear and division. The underlying news, however, is that Trump participated in this book, unlike in the first, convinced by Lindsey Graham that Woodward would give him a fair shake. Seventeen interviews with the sitting president inform this book, as well as extensive digging that yields not so much news as confirmation: Trump has survived his ineptitude because the majority of Congressional Republicans go along with the madness because they “had made a political survival decision” to do so—and surrendered their party to him. The narrative often requires reading between the lines. Graham, though a byword for toadyism, often reins Trump in; Jared Kushner emerges as the real power in the West Wing, “highly competent but often shockingly misguided in his assessments”; Trump admires tyrants, longs for their unbridled power, resents the law and those who enforce it, and is quick to betray even his closest advisers; and, of course, Trump is beholden to Putin. Trump occasionally emerges as modestly self-aware, but throughout the narrative, he is in a rage. Though he participated, he said that he suspected this to be “a lousy book.” It’s not—though readers may wish Woodward had aired some of this information earlier, when more could have been done to stem the pandemic. When promoting Fear, the author was asked for his assessment of Trump. His reply: “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis.” Multiple crises later, Woodward concludes, as many observers have, “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.

Kirkus Reviews

"Anybody thinking about casting a vote should have to sit and read your book as a civic duty. Because it does reveal—more than anything I've seen about this president—who he is, what he really believes, on the record."—Willie Geist, Morning Joe

“A huge bestseller, as it should be. An amazing book.”—Wolf Blitzer, CNN

“Trump is the first candidate for president to launch an October surprise against himself. It’s as if Nixon sent the Nixon tapes to Woodward in an envelope by FedEx.”—Nick Confessore of the New York Times

“Even in a news landscape where it feels like nothing is shocking anymore, the first excerpts from the new Bob Woodward book still landed like a pair of hydrogen bombs.”—Vanity Fair

“Woodward’s prose offers readers that delicious, vicarious sense of being an insider, right there in the room with Bob, a witness to presidential sulks and boasts.”—Rosa Brooks, Washington Post

“We’ve had 45 presidents of the United States and we have had exactly one Bob Woodward. …He has written about nine consecutive presidents from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.…Bob Woodward delivers the verdict of the first draft of history.”—Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC host

“[T]his revealing look at an embattled presidency facing a pandemic, racial unrest and a suffering economy…the book’s details have been explosive.”—USA Today

“Rage is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand Trump.”—Walter Clemons, New York Journal of Books

“It's okay. I mean it’s fine.”—President Donald J. Trump, when asked if Rage was accurate

“Damning…. Unlike most Trump tapes, Woodward’s actually tell us something new about the president, rather than just confirming what we think we already know.”—Michelle Goldberg, New York Times

“Rage may be Bob Woodward's most important book since All the President's Men.”—Peter Bergen, CNN

“Bob Woodward induced a confession of the greatest lie in American history...a catastrophic leadership failure.”—Steve Schmidt, campaign strategist for John McCain

“Now, thanks to The Post’s Bob Woodward, we have learned the answer with regard to what history is likely to rank as perhaps the most consequential of all the falsehoods that Trump has uttered.”—Karen Tumulty, Washington Post

“That’s part of what makes the revelations today from Bob Woodward's new book so stomach churning...the worst thing you can imagine."—Rachel Maddow, MSNBC host

“Over nearly a half-century, no other person—including people wielding official power as legislators or prosecutors—has done as much to illuminate the modern presidency and help shape understanding of the nine people to hold the office during his career as Woodward, wielding only a journalist’s unofficial powers of curiosity, notepad, and recorder.”—John F. Harris, Politico

“Stunning...arresting”—NPR

“The book possesses more than a patina of similarity to the famous televised interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon, the president Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down with their reporting on Watergate nearly a half-century ago.”—The Guardian

“At age 77, well over half a lifetime after he and Carl Bernstein took down President Richard Nixon with their reporting on Watergate, Woodward seems more willing—perhaps entitled—to put himself in the narrative and state his own views explicitly. In many ways, though, he’s the same Woodward. He’s an unparalleled amasser of secret documents, inside facts, dazzling scoops….What Woodward does is paint a picture of presidents dealing with power and crises.”—Fred Kaplan, Slate

“I don’t believe Mr. Woodward has ever written so clearly or with such urgency...”—Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Woodward follows Fear with another alarming and deeply reported account of turmoil, dysfunction, and recklessness within the Trump administration... This devastating report will leave a lasting mark.”—Publishers Weekly

“The most comprehensive and damning catalog yet of [Trump’s] failings in office”—Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times

“An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Arguably the most important journalist of the past 50 years, and we all owe him a huge debt of gratitude. He is thorough, disciplined, careful. He fact-checks, backs up what he says, mines as many sources as possible.”—Harlan Coben, bestselling novelist

“The preeminent journalist of his generation.”—David Ignatius, Washington Post

From the Publisher

RAGE, a remarkably current and informative audiobook about Donald Trump’s presidency, is critical of the job he has done. “Trump,” concludes its author, “is the wrong man for the job.” Narrator Robert Petkoff's tone is conversational, and he doesn’t attempt to mimic either the author or his subject, allowing the material to speak for itself. And what rich material it is, based on 19 interviews Woodward conducted with the president, along with current and past members of his inner circle, as well as a trove of documents. Of particular interest may be Trump’s varied responses to COVID-19—but there are also insights into his views on China, North Korea, racial unrest, the men who once worked for him such as Jim Mattis and Dan Coats, and, of course, his own legacy. This is an absorbing audiobook that will keep listeners tuned in regardless of how much they think they know about the past four years. L.W.S. 2021 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2020 - AudioFile