Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

To Have and to Hoax

By Martha Waters.

I'm not sure I can write a review any better than the Smart Bitches one that sold me on reading the book, but I'll say some things.

Violet and James met when he was trying to save her from being "compromised" by his rake friend Jeremy. They fell instantly in love, which was great since they then got compromised and had to get married a whopping ten minutes into their acquaintance. (Seriously, the whole "compromised" thing in Regency books is ridiculous and this book does a great job of pointing that out.) They're one of those "fight a lot, make up a lot, bang a lot" couples, but overall it goes great for the first year. It's instalove, it's great.

(Disclaimer: I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find an explanation as to how "compromised" worked in the Regency era online and I AM FINDING EFFING NOTHING. This and this is as close as I've found. As far as I've ever deduced from reading Regency books over the years, "compromised" means that you MIGHT have had so much as the slightest bit of romantic/sexual contact with a guy, which means that YOU HAVE TO GET MARRIED IMMEDIATELY. Sure, sometimes you catch a couple making out, but they could be dancing (as in James and Violet's case), or even being caught alone with a man for 30 seconds seems to do it in these books. If you've had any contact alone with a guy, you marry him or you're a doomed whore, period. I seriously wonder if it was actually that bad back in the day or if that's just a convention of the romance novel tropes.) 

And then. Violet and James found out a BIG REVELATION that changes everything. And since Violet found it out slightly before James did, he gets the impression that she was involved, and he's mad at her, and then she's mad at him, and four years later they are basically in a quiet feud of a marriage. They admittedly got married at an immature age (18/23), but still.

When Violet gets a letter saying that James has hit his head falling off a horse--one of their perennial fights in the relationship is his running horse stables--she runs to go see him. And, well, he's fine. And cranky. And all "why did you even care in the first place?" This ticks Violet off no end and gives her the bright idea to let him see how it feels, but talking an actor into faking being a doctor who diagnoses her with consumption. Except James pretty much figures it out instantly and then does things like calling her awful mother to come over and nurse her. So basically they have a prank war going on, much to the eye-rolls of their friend group, who haven't been told what's going on. 

For the record, their friend group (for I think they will be in sequels are);

• Diana, a widow looking to get back into the boinking scene, later makes a bet with Jeremy about finding him a bride even though he's not interested in marriage at all
• Emily, who's still single and likely to be forced into an unhappy marriage
• Penvale, Diana's brother
• Jeremy, the aforementioned rake friend
• Julian, the aforementioned actor, seems to be interested in Emily
• West, James's older brother, who's kind of not in Dad's good books any more since he had an accident that may have...well, impeded his virility
• Sophie, West's former beloved, who married someone else and is now a widow. James flirts with her as a method of pissing off Violet. Everyone else is all "that's your brother's ex, wtf?"

Anyway, as the Smart Bitches review points out, they're being ridiculous and immature and everyone knows it. James and Violet may think up these schemes, but the other one ALWAYS sees through what they are doing pretty much instantly. Their friends are all "Oh, come on!" about this stuff. It sounds ridiculous.

And yet, this book works. You absolutely buy James and Violet's love for each other (and well, immaturity), why they're doing these silly ass things, and realizing they still love each other and really should apologize. There was one last minute "Big Misunderstanding" moment toward the end that annoyed me, but the author did redeem going there at the end to make James realize he needs to clean up his act, as it were. 

(Though I will say, good lord, these people seem privileged AF. They sleep in late, Violet spends her time reorganizing the library, they really don't have much to think about except their own love/social lives or have any other cares. But...it's a Regency novel, I suspect that is part of the appeal of these things. I can't even explain why I read them off and on.) 

Anyway...if you're into stuff like You Deserve Each Other or The Hating Game, and this level of immaturity followed by people getting over their shit doesn't bother you, then you will be into this book. If that sort of thing does irritate you, then by all means, skip it. But I really enjoyed this and pre-ordered the next one already. Four stars. 

 

Becoming

By Michelle Obama.

This was recommended to me for the romance. I certainly enjoyed that bit. Is that terrible of me to say? Sure is. Not that the rest of it isn't good, but I was always kinda "eh, she seems nice" about Michelle beforehand so I never felt too strongly about her or paid much attention really. But this got my attention. 

Anyway: Michelle grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where her neighborhood became more and more segregated, but her family was close. She had some interesting friends, such as Jesse Jackson's daughter and a fun lady named Suzanne that sounds great. She had a handicapped dad growing up and her dad tried to hide any issues he had with that as long as he could. 

She went to college, she went to law school, became a lawyer, wasn't as into being a lawyer as she thought she'd be...I liked what she said about it on page 93. I won't quote the entire damn page, but she notes that she wasn't called to doing it, but the rewards get real and you've joined the tribe and you're succeeding at age 25, and everything you ever learned was converted to this. Oh yeah, and she met this guy who was there for the summer that everyone seemed to think was a big deal. And he was late. 

"A senior partner asks if you'll mentor an incoming summer associate, and the answer is easy: Of course you will. You have yet to understand the altering force of a simple yes. You don't know that when a memo arrives to confirm the assignment, some deep and unseen fault line in your life has begun to tremble, that some hold is already starting to slip." 

I love Michelle's dry snark about how rumor had it that Barack was all gifted and cute. "I was skeptical of it all. In my experience, you put a suit on any half intelligent black man and white people tended to go bonkers. I was doubtful he'd earned the hype." She wasn't impressed with his badly done photo, was slightly impressed at him being from Hawaii and thus a "comparative exotic geek," and the one thing she was into was his sexy baritone. While they hit it off at lunch, finding him "refreshing, unconventional, and weirdly elegant," she said she did not once think of him as someone she'd want to date, since she was his mentor and not into dating anyone, and he smoked. But hey, maybe she'd fix him up with a girlfriend. I'm amused at the time she brought him along to a happy hour, where he got cornered by some lady and was sending her the "please rescue me" look. Her response: "But he was a grown man. I let him rescue himself." 

That was where I was all, "I like Michelle." She notes that he's probably too cerebral for most folks to put up with, including her girlfriends. "Next time happy hour rolled around, I left him at the office." 

Things started to change. "I talked myself out of being disappointed when he didn't surface in my office doorway. I talked myself out of being too excited when he did. I had feelings for the guy, but they were latent.... I might have been ignoring whatever was growing between us, but he wasn't." I hear ya, girl. They go to see Les Miserables for a work event, and both of them find it super depressing and sneak out for a drink. Then things start to dawn on her. "Until now, I'd constructed my existence carefully... I think now it's why I guarded myself so carefully, why I still wasn't ready to let him in. He was like a wind that threatened to unsettle everything."  And guess what, he did. "Life with Barack would never be dull. I knew it even then. It would be some version of banana yellow and slightly hair-raising." 

I do love a love story with a sense of fate and foreshadowing. Easy to say now, of course, but there's that feeling... 

Upon visiting the family in Hawaii, "as different as we were, we fit together in an interesting way. It was as if the reason for the ease and attraction between us was now being explained." She sees what he's like, his relationships, and that he respected women and could handle an equal. "It seemed as if maybe we'd never stop, that maybe this conversation between us could go on for life." I'm amused that when he proposed, he kind of picks one last fight with her about marriage before actually having the ring come out.

Later on in the book, she wonders how her life went from "predictable, control-freak fantasy existence I'd envisioned for myself" and how she'd chosen away from that and when. She finally concludes it's a time when she heard him speak at a church about creating the world as it should be. "I'd known the guy for only a couple of months then, but in retrospect I see now that this was my swerve. In that moment, without saying a word, I'd signed on for a lifetime of us, and a lifetime of this." 

Other aspects of the book:

• "I would later be awarded the honor of looking after the legal concerns of Barney the Dinosaur. (Yes, this is what passes for freewheeling in a law firm.)" 
• "You wouldn't think I'd be the type of person to find psychic relief in the intricacies of the urethane polyether polyol trade, but I did." 
• "There are truths we face and truths we ignore. I spent the next six months quietly trying to empower myself without making any sort of abrupt change." 
• So they get married, Michelle gets other jobs, Barack runs for office, Barack gets shit and loses an office when he misses a vote when Malia is sick. Geez, people. 
• Barack on the idea of marriage counseling: "Couldn't he just run over to Borders and buy some relationship books?" 
• Some kids say "Are we there yet?" Malia grew up with "Okay, now is he president?" 
• The Obamas felt bad for having to celebrate Malia's 4th of July birthday in public, and having a last minute private party in private. Malia, on the other hand, thought it was the best birthday ever. 
• I winced at "I already looked forward to the day I could pass whatever wisdom I picked up to the next First Lady in line." We do not find out how that went (or if it went) with Melania, however. 
• Barack's advice to the girls on the first day of school: "And definitely don't pick your nose!" 
• The president elect is offered $100,000 in federal funds to help with moving and redecorating, but Barack insisted they pay for it all themselves. 
• "The White House, one learns, operates with the express purpose of optimizing the well-being, efficiency, and overall power of one person--and that's the president. Barack was surrounded by people whose job was to treat him like a precious gem. It sometimes felt like a throwback to some lost era, when a household revolved solely around the man's needs, and it was the opposite of what I wanted our daughters to think as normal." That said, he certainly liked not having household obligations to worry about. 
• Living in the White House is rent-free and utilities and staff are paid for, but they are charged for all other living expenses. 
• Even Queen Elizabeth wears unpleasant shoes that hurt her feet in public. Michelle and the Queen bond and laugh over it. 
• Some British economist did a study that looked at students at a school she visited, noting that their scores jumped after she spent time with them. Michelle says it was on the girls, but kids will invest more when they feel they are invested in. 
• The Obamas didn't let the girls do media, but they did allow the dogs to do a lot of media. 
• Sunny is described as "a free-spirited rambler who seemed to see no point in being house trained, given how big her new house was." 
• After six years of turkey pardoning and growing older, the girls are too old to even pretend it's funny, and thus get pardoned from the pardon. 

She keeps the family reactions to Trump short, trying to focus on what they did vs. what happened after. Going high...and also mentions Hamilton, which pleased me. They'll keep fighting.

Anyway, I enjoyed this, four stars. Could be a bit longer, but it was good. 

American Princess: A Novel of First Daughter Alice Roosevelt

By Stephanie Marie Thornton.

I'm a fangirl of Alice Roosevelt, and this is a fiction book based on real life history and written from her perspective. It's very, very, very well done. She's such a personality and character. The one thing that made it hard for me to read was knowing Alice's history and knowing that her love life wasn't going to go too well, which pained me because I wanted better for her.

Anyway: Alice is the oldest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and really, really enjoyed basically being a public showboat while in the White House, getting dubbed "Princess Alice" and getting up to all kinds of fun. Her female friends turn out to be well, not great girls and they're all going after each other's dudes, more or less. Alice is the one who eventually lands Nick Longworth, who is fantastically charming in the wooing and then gets more iffy (to say the least) as things go on. They eventually come to agreements/detentes, more or less, and Alice later falls for Bill Borah, another married politician, and gets pregnant by him. The way the other parties handle that situation is actually rather sweet. It's a shame that her daughter Paulina turned out to be well....a depressed pill, but that's from real life as well. In the end, Alice does find a kind of happiness when she gets to raise her granddaughter Joanna, who's a kindred spirit.

The book begins to be a bit "one, two, skip a few" after awhile, which feels kind of interrupt-y after the "in real life" pace of the earlier half, but I assume that's because the publisher didn't want an 800 page book. I liked the author's notes at the end as to what she changed up a bit and where she got the fun historical details. 

Overall, I give it four stars. 

If You Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt

Edited by Mary Jo Binker.

This book feels like a sampler platter or easy textbook primer to the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote an advice column for many years. Said advice columns are all online, and this is not a book of all of them. Instead, the author writes primers on her times, who she knew, general thoughts on what Eleanor said about whatever, before giving us some samples of her columns. From what we actually see of Eleanor's writing, she is inherently sensible, practical, and timeless because so much of what she said still applies today.

I am having a hard time reviewing this because well, what else can you say?

About three stars: I would have preferred more Eleanor direct here, but oh well. 

The Virgin's Lover

By Philippa Gregory.

This is a historical novel featuring the love triangle of Queen Elizabeth I, her boyfriend Robert Dudley,and his very unfortunate wife, Amy Robsart Dudley.Such a tawdry title to carry around reading in public!

When Robert and Amy got married, he was 17 and she was 21. However, this marriage turned out to be a whopping mismatch. Amy is an unabashed country girl who just wants to live in the country in a nice house and doesn't give any kind of crap about royalty. Whereas the Dudleys are an ambitious family who very much wants to be as royal as they can get away with. Robert's relatives already shamed the family during the whole Lady Jane Grey drama and at the start of this, his name is pretty much mud and he's forced to live with his wife's stepmother, who wants him to do farming. OH HELL NO TO MANUAL LABOR AND ACTUAL WORK, says Robert, who runs away in the dead of night to avoid this.

Anyway, Robert gets back into the royal good graces when Queen Elizabeth gets crowned. They fall in love and Robert both loves her and the imagined fact that he can be king with her. I'll say this for Robert: I buy that he used to love Amy and that their relationship is incompatible and he is at least somewhat more compatible with Elizabeth due to ambition. I do believe that he loves Elizabeth and she loves him. But that said, he's a charming manipulator and working his wiles all the way down the aisle and unofficially getting engaged to/pseudo-marrying/definitely schtupping with a medieval condom Elizabeth, while still technically married. He wants Elizabeth to get him a divorce but somehow that never happens. He tells Amy the truth about his affair and his love and how he wants a divorce--and it's implied that if she doesn't go willingly she'll be forced out. But Amy is blindingly, codependently* in love and refuses to divorce no matter how he treats her. This is a bad situation. 

• of course in this day and age you're literally nothing without your man unless you're the queen, so.

The author posits (I'm not going to worry so much on spoilers, 'cause it's history) that Robert's pushing for marriage so hard and insisting that he become king and not king consort and the like led Elizabeth to beg her closest advisor, William Cecil, into fixing her problem for her because she canNOT break it off with him or tell him no or anything. So Cecil gets the bright idea to have Amy murdered, "make it look like an accident," and throw enough shade on Dudley to make him look like a murderer who went free and thus can never marry Elizabeth. The author says in her author's note that she thinks this happened, given the evidence that Elizabeth seemed to know that Dudley's wife was about to die and said as such in public a few days before her actual death. I hate to say "poor Dudley" because he's such a damn manipulator, but you do end up feeling sorry for him once his wife dies and he feels genuinely sad--not to mention actually innocent and even I don't think he would have killed her--at her death. 

So overall I think the writing is very well done, especially the characterization of the men in this book (Cecil is unabashedly fine with assassination and in this book, apparently initiated the death of Mary of  Guise). Cecil is doing the best he can with a woman who's so besotted that most of the time she's not seeing reason. On the other hand, both Amy and Elizabeth are lovesick idiots, more or less. Amy is just a dingdong, really. Sweet innocent country girl who insists that Robert actually WANTS to settle down in the country (never mind that he throws a shit fit at the idea) and resigns herself to being miserable and pining and wishing for death once he wants to divorce her. That seems like a fairly legit characterization, but Extreme Doormats like Amy, well. You feel sorry for them but they also emotionally exhaust you. When a doctor refuses to see Amy because he figures everyone wants her dead and nobody will be happy if she's saved and he'll probably be conveniently blamed for her death if he sees her...fuuuuuck, that's true and depressing. Poor girl. I don't like her much but she didn't deserve that. 

And unfortunately, Elizabeth suffers from a lot of this as well. Elizabeth is one of my favorite royals for being an emotional badass, but that is not the author's view of her, at least not in her mid-twenties. I get that Elizabeth's besotted and hell, even Dudley actually is. But she's also portrayed as rather a ninny who can't tell Robert no (sweetie, you're the damn queen, if anyone can and should tell him no, don't usurp me, it's YOU) and it about made me choke when Elizabeth's famous line about "I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king" is turned into something Cecil says to her: "Once day you will have toe say that you are just a weak woman but you have the heart and stomach of a king," while Elizabeth vacillates and wusses out on war. Cecil sees her as being too weak to rule even if she's rather clever, and sadly given her behavior it'd be hard to argue otherwise. She wants some guy to be her partner and help her out, in a subordinate sort of way, and she vacillates between her love Robert and her "Spirit" Cecil. In the end, she can't break up with Robert and wants Cecil to take care of it. Sigh. This is the girl that becomes Queen Elizabeth? It's depressing. 

So....three and a half stars. Well written, but the female characters--particularly the queen--are such ninnies that it depresses me. 

Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House

By Omarosa Manigault Newman.

Obviously I've been reading a good chunk of books at the library about the dumpster fire that is the Trump administration. However, I wasn't sure if I wanted to read this one or not, since I seem to prefer the ah, eavesdropper books. I definitely don't want to read the books of anyone who is still on the Trump Kool-Aid, so no Spicey and no Scaramucci for me, thanks. (Given that nobody is talking about those guys's books, I'm guessing that I'm not missing anything.) I may read the Cliff Sims book sometime even though he sounds like he's somewhat on the Trump-Aid still because well, you write a book called Team of Vipers and you're trying to join the other side. In the case of Omarosa, she was pushed out* but has definitely gone off the Aid. I don't really know what to make of her since I never watched her on TV very much and the impression I got of her was being all Ms. "I'm Not Here To Make Friends" (yeah, that's in here) and making a career for herself by being on reality TV shows. That latter bit is accurate, though it does sound like she has qualifications in working in politics (on both sides!) and getting a degree in ministry. Does she strike me as a trustworthy source, I guess is where I'm going with this? I decided that what the heck, I'll give it a shot and we'll see how it goes. 

• though she does argue off and on towards the end that she was looking for a way out on her own--not sure whether or not to believe this.

Anyway: Omarosa grew up poor, lost her dad as a kid, went to college, worked her way up in media and politics and got degrees. She worked for the Clinton White House, worked for a foundation founded by the Cosbys ("I reported to his wife. I only interacted with Mr. Cosby a handful of times in my entire year at the foundation."), briefly mentions being married the first time once and that's it for that. Then she auditions for The Apprentice.

On The Apprentice (the first time), Omarosa notes that she must have had some kind of "it" factor to get hired on the show, they had humiliating physical exams and psychological evaluations in which she was "extremely feminine in my style, but my test scores showed that I strategized like the men". She consciously studied how to be a mirror and a reflection of him, and making sure nobody forgot her name (which means "my beautiful child desired"). A friend who worked in reality TV advised her that she should either be starting a fight, stirring a fight, or breaking one up and always being where the action is. And to create a television persona and own it. "Realistically, I knew that the very first Apprentice winner would not be a black woman. it was not that I lacked the confidence to win; I just understood the way things worked. But even with the odds against me, I still wanted to win. The question was, could I win the show without being the actual winner?" Her strategy was to try to get into the boardroom because that was the only time you could talk to Trump, which paid off. 

In her experience, he was always "off-color" and the guy who gets away with launching his show at the Playboy Mansion. "The longer you live in Trumpworld, the more normal things like a work party at the Playboy Mansion seem to you."  Her experience of Melania at the Playboy Mansion: "She also projected an aura that said, Keep back two hundred feet!" Omarosa would approach her and talk about her son--or other surface things. She's just staring. Don Jr. was there with his pregnant wife, complaining about the hell he was going through at being at the Playboy Mansion with his pregnant wife. 

As for Ivanka, "their relationship goes up to the line of appropriate father/daughter behavior and jumps right over it. I believe he covets his daughter. It's uncomfortable to watch them carry on... I believe she exploits his fixation with her to get her way." She mentions him kind of groping her and feeling sick watching them and listening to Donald carry on about how hot she is, and Ivanka either doesn't notice or is purposely allowing it. 

She does mention that when the National Enquirer sent a reporter to her brother's funeral and claimed to have interviewed her, she wanted to sue and Donald called her up to ask her to drop it because David Pecker is his friend. They negotiated a deal and Omarosa got offered a job there. Yeah, that's fishy.

When she did Celebrity Apprentice, she mentions that Gary Busey was "annoying but entertaining" and reeked, and La Toya kept bringing up her brother's death and how his ghost visited her at night and how Dennis Rodman was presumably bringing dealers and hookers up to his room. 

Anyway, she and Donald liked each other and were loyal to each other--"it begins with shared triumph." She noticed that he had other African-American friends and didn't consider him racist at the time, but thought he was racial, i.e. he uses race and racial relations to manipulate people. But she had a blind spot towards him and she had gratitude for him for how he changed her life, so she'd explain it away to herself and to others on television. She wanted to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign but wasn't asked to, so when Trump asked, she switched parties (I guess) to work for him. "He chooses people who are very loyal, who subscribe to the fame and charisma that is Donald Trump's magnetism. And I was one of those people." 

I'm going to list the campaign dish:

• Melania's plagiarizing: she notes that the woman who was forced to take the fall for it was "one of the higher-ranked persons of color in the Trump Organization" but she wasn't fired because then she would have been free to tell secrets. Being caught destroyed any hopes of anyone getting Melania more involved in the campaign. 
• Omarosa absolutely suspects Pence, right from when she met his brothers and one of them was all "He's always wanted to be president..I mean vice president!" with a wink. "It was a real joking-not-joking look, and I filed it under "keep an eye on that situation." 
• Donald goes to an African-American church and acts like a two-year-old asking when he can leave yet. He also throws a gifted prayer shawl off of him the second he can. 
• "He was fixated on Vladimir Putin as a feared, respected, and admired leader....Trump went with his gut, and his gut told him, "I like Putin, and I want him to be my friend." Nothing else mattered."
• The Women of Trump were all convinced that Hillary had some secret neurological disease.
• Hillary's reaction to Omarosa's new job: "She gave me a lukewarm smile and said, "Donald? Really?" 
• She says she was shocked at the Access Hollywood tape, but she tried to rationalize it at the time as "He's just trying to impress the guys on the bus." When someone asked Trump if a tape might exist, he said no and then said "Put it to bed." That translates as "He said it" (the n-word). in their world. "No one seemed shocked. No one said, "He'd never say that." 
• "When he and Ivanka first started dating, I asked Donald what he thought of Jared. "He seems a little sweet to me," he said, using his phrasing for "gay."

The post-election dish:

• "The transition office was decorated in a way that assumed that Hillary, not Trump, would win. The spouse suite was done up in masculine colors and the presidential offices were feminine colors. Melania took one look at that office space and relocated to working out of the Presidential Suite at the Trump hotel in DC." 
• Trump calls Betsy "Ditzy DeVos" behind her back. 
• Donald wanted to be sworn in on a copy of "The Art Of The Deal" rather than a Bible. Omarosa told him this was just too crazy and not to repeat that to anyone else. "He wanted me to think he was kidding." 
• After being told that Donald's "spiritual advisor" Paula White has a "special relationship" with him, Omarosa wonders if it's ever been "missionary." 

"Running" the country:

• The Obama administration installed energy-saving lights that turned off after about twenty minutes, which nobody could figure out so they were governing in the dark. 
• Sean Spicer is the one cited as deciding to back up Trump's inauguration crowds lies. Reince Priebus also lays that down as a directive, regardless of accuracy.
• Mike Pence " was being directed by a higher deity to agree with Trump no matter what." 
• Trump calls Jeff Sessions "Benjamin Button" behind his back.
• When around Pence, Omarosa says people on his staff kept calling him president and making jokes about "when" and "once you become president." 
• She says Trump has never read any of the pieces of legislation he's signed and gets 5-10 bullet points fed to him per piece of legislation. 
• "Everyone at the highest levels of the White House knows that he struggles with large documents or complex briefings. They make excuses for his faults and justify their own complicity, as loyal cult followers do. They believe he is the messenger, not the writer (or reader) of the message. Trump's charisma is all that matters. He has an ability to convince you that he's right, and that everything is going to be fine. You choose to believe because the alternative is terrifying, that  he's not equipped with the basic skills to make crucial decisions that will impact the lives of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world." 
• Melania seemed to be enjoying throwing a women's only luncheon until Trump and Pence walked in. Before the election, Melania had no power to change anything so just wore a mask. But now that the spotlight is on her all the time, and people see his shitty behavior towards her...Omarosa thinks that she's now using her "voice" but not with actual words. She can use her outfits and body language. "She could humiliate him in public with small, ambiguous gestures, just as he'd openly humiliated her with his affairs and lascivious behavior for years. And there was nothing anyone  could do to stop her." 
• Ivanka really hated being shown up on SNL, particularly the "Complicit" ad. 
• Nobody wanted to go to Trump's Easter Egg Rolls. "We couldn't give tickets away." Those that did show up were usually white, and "I spent a week trying to line up diverse groups to participate in the Easter Egg Roll, but no one wanted to come!" 
• "I kept getting tackled by my own teammates," particularly Kellyanne and Betsy. 
• When the first African-American woman usher gets fired from the White House, Omarosa claims she told people that "We can't keep getting rid of black people for flimsy reasons." Why was she fired? "Allegedly, Trump didn't approve of her handling of his tanning bed." Also she just obviously hated him and didn't hide it. 
• In-house, they referred to "the Russian concussion." According to her, nobody agreed with Comey's firing but knew better than to say so. 
• Omarosa repeatedly says she was worried about his cognitive decline but didn't know who the hell to talk to about it--lord knows his doctor or his relatives wouldn't do shit. She finally tried Lara Trump, who brushed it off. 
• At one point Betsy totally ditches Omarosa on a business trip, telling her to take an Uber. "I did take an Uber--straight to the airport." Trump claimed he'd "get rid of her" (DeVos) but..."She is just as horrible as you suspect she is." 
• Omarosa has a list of who leaked to who. Kellyanne had a lot of sources, Bannon leaked to Wolff, Ivanka and Jared leak to Joe and Mika, Hope Hicks leaked to Maggie Haberman. 
• According to Omarosa, Charlottesville really super bothered her. "There is a difference between being a racist, racial, and someone who racializes....But if you recognize that we live in a racialized society and label someone racial, you can work with that."  But did he want to start a race war?
• She claims at this point she wanted to leave by the end of August but stuck around for the National HBCU Week Conference in September, which Betsy wanted to cancel. Omarosa went to Trump and got it put back on after Betsy canceled it.  Why didn't she leave after the conference was over like she says she wanted to? She does not say.
• Omarosa says that Donald calls Ivana for advice when ever Melania isn't speaking to him, probably to psis her off. 
• Omarosa thinks Donald drinks too much Diet Coke (8 cans/day) and that is probably what's causing him dementia, according to a study she found online. She tried to show it to Trump and got caught at it by Rob Porter and told never to do it again. She said he was the kind of guy you didn't want to be alone in an elevator with. "Trumpworld was overpopulated with questionable men." 
• "Another highly visible assistant to the president might still be carrying on her affair right now."  Gee, why didn't you drop that name? 
• After her firing, Omarosa claims to have gotten sympathetic calls from Donald, Ivanka and Jared and Eric and Lara, in which the latter offered her a job on the reelection campaign. She declined. 
• Omarosa claims that a nameless person confirmed that Trump said the n-word on a tape, but doesn't say more about it than that.
• When she went on Celebrity Big Brother, she thought it was restful to get to detox away from the media. 
• Omarosa's theory on Melania's wardrobe is that when she wears pussy bows or the offensive jacket or wears suffragette white, it's to punish Donald.  If she was forced to clean up her husband's mess, she wore the jacket to make him have to fix what drama she stirred up. "Not that Melania doesn't have compassion for immigrant children; I'm sure she does. But she gladly, spitefully, wrecked her husband's directives to make him look foolish." 

I'm not sure what to believe, exactly. I'd guess it's probably mostly accurate, but at the same time presumably she wants to make herself look good while at the same time justifying why she didn't leave when she saw how bad he was. I wonder why she's claiming she wanted out of the job but didn't actually quit on her own after September ends. Unlike most of us, I would bet she'd have money for a few months to float her along without having to get another job first before quitting. I'm not sure why she's not hanging whoever's having affairs out to dry along with everyone else (I guess her "source" on the Trump N-Bomb Tape wants to stay employed?). Also, this n-word tape thing has gotten weird. 

On the other hand, her recounting of shitty things people did certainly lines up with other reports of shitty things being done. I certainly think one would have to rationalize to themselves why they are still following a guy who has gone bad and rotten since you first knew him. She was in it for the power and certainly got some from him, and yeah, I'd bet it would screw with your head to be attaching yourself to this guy while he's acting like that.

But it does seem ridiculous to claim any kind of naivete about why other African-American people wouldn't want to get on the Trump Train (literally). That had to have been obvious when people are going after you and complaining about it.  I liked what this review said about it: "A seat at the table is meaningless, if your boss is dead-set on serving you and your community for lunch." So while I think there's probably a good chunk of facts here, there's also a lot of rationalization that may taint your views or hers. 

So....three and a half stars, I guess. 

Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton

By Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Well, this book didn't quite go as expected. I was genuinely trying to figure out if it was supposed to be straight up historical biography or a fictionalized version of the story or what. To some degree the author tells us stuff like how she thinks Eliza was thinking and that makes it seem more fictional. But also, well, she has a different opinion on the Reynolds Affair than others. I am really surprised this hasn't been being talked about all over the Hamilton fan world, actually. She says she started writing the book while the musical was becoming popular but hadn't gone full blast. 

This is a comprehensive book--it even features the post-Alexander years in more detail and follows up on their kids, which I haven't heard much about. There were a lot of soap opera dramas among the Schuyler relatives, which amused me. At one point there was a comment about how come all of the Schuyler girls are marrying dubious guys except for Eliza? (Though I dunno, the "patroon" guy Peggy married didn't sound too bad.) Later the author says that she thought the Schuyler sisters went after men like their dad-- risk takers and fortune hunters. There's more about how John "Carter" Church was seriously a scammer dude and he ran Angelica's life. Angelica comes off as a fashionable lady but maybe a bit less sharp than musical fans expect. 

Actual quote from Alexander in a letter to Lafayette: "I have been employed for the last ten months in rocking the cradle and studying the art of fleecing my neighbors." Whaaaaat? I can only sort of wonder if this is some kind of foreshadowing.

The main very surprising thing about this book is what the author proposes on page 156 about the Reynolds affair:

"But what if that familiar story is a fiction? What if it was nothing more than a desperate public spin on a far more complicated and troublesome private and political backstory? What if sex was a cover-up for power and money? That is what Alexander's political enemies believed, and it is what Maria Reynolds always insisted. What if it was all a story, and Eliza also knew it?" 

The author posits that Eliza's various male relatives were engaged in speculation and gambling--her dad, John Church, Stephen Van Rensselaer, their associates and friends, were all up to something, and Alexander may have been privy to information as Secretary of the Treasury to enable that. He was acting as Church's attorney/agent and executed some of these transactions. They all were involved in shady land deals as well. And Alexander's assistant secretary William Duer had to resign in disgrace after he was caught handing out favors and manipulating army supply contracts. Alexander then got Duer a job as governor of an investment group that Alexander founded, which was a terrible idea because Duer was a straight up crook and ran up the value of stock options. And Duer bragged that Alexander was giving him insider information. We're told Eliza was pressuring him to resign from the Treasury. Duer got up to more shit and scandals and I guess caused the Panic of 1792 and ended up in jail. We're told that James Reynolds got involved when Alexander asked him to buy some notes for his personal portfolio and when Reynolds got arrested, he offered up Alexander as being involved in speculation. When Maria Reynolds was interviewed, she said the men were involved in business, she'd burned a lot of their letters but saved a few that proved that Alexander was giving James money--and Maria was a third cousin to Eliza. 

The author assumes that Alexander told Eliza some of his issues-- "A man who intends to keep a secret from his wife doesn't invite his accusers to meet in his family living room on a Saturday evening." She posits that Alexander forged the letters from Maria and used them to embarrass his accusers to go away. We're told that Maria denied the affair and was shocked. We're told that James Monroe thought there was something fishy about the whole thing because the letters sounded like ones out of "Pamela" (i.e. soap opera-ish). The author herself definitely thinks it's fishy that Maria can spell difficult words correctly but sometimes misspelled easier words. The author thinks that Alexander and Eliza were more concerned with keeping him out of debtor's prison and never thought the affair would make the media. The author also says that Eliza burned the evidence. 

In other fun facts, we learn that calling someone a "rascal" translated into "He has no dick" (OF COURSE IT DOES) and that's why Phillp Hamilton went all nuts about wanting to duel with Eacker. Angelica Hamilton sounds like she was never too mentally stable in the first place even before her brother died, but that put her over the edge.

In the author's note, the author says that from what she can see in what letters Eliza allowed to survive is that it is hard to make sense of her reaction to the Reynolds "affair." She doesn't consider herself to be betrayed, she blames his enemies, they stay close. She did not kick him to the couch a la "Burn."

"Instead, if the story of the affair is true, she apparently clings to him, makes excuses, and insists to her dying day that he was an admirable husband.... What makes it hard to reconcile the life of Eliza Hamilton with her response to Alexander's infidelity is that we have to posit a personality change occurring suddenly in the summer of 1797. We have to believe that the affair crushed her spirit and turned her from a feisty child of the frontier to a victim of her own self-deception. We have to posit that Eliza simply could not handle the reality of Alexander's affair and would do anything to keep him. When he dies, in a duel fueled at least in part by the scandal, she carries on for decades insisting that Alexander has been maligned, idolizing him and insisting on his virtue. In short, when it comes to Alexander, Eliza begins to look a bit foolish."

However, since Eliza didn't act a fool after Alexander's death either... what if what doesn't fit here isn't Eliza's reaction, but the whole affair story? The author says she had trouble writing the book after the pamphlet story came out because it didn't fit with the woman she'd come to know. And that's when she started investigating the idea that it was all a story. Why didn't anyone check Maria's handwriting? How come the letters sound suspiciously like ones Eliza might write (she wasn't a good speller)? Maybe that's why Eliza burned her own letters, so nobody could compare. The author assumes that Eliza burned the evidence. 

The author does cite her sources if you want to check them yourself, and says that the liberties she took were instances in which she ended up extrapolating as to what went on when she could not find anything said by Eliza, which she calls historical triangulation. 

I kind of feel like I just don't know what to make of this. She makes a fairly compelling argument but as she admits, there's no 'smoking gun" to confirm any of this. I feel like a lot of this is based on personalities: that the guys were all into gambling and trying to make money, that Eliza didn't seem to give Alexander the cold shoulder IRL, the suspiciousness of iffy 1700's spelling. I think it's a reasonable theory but we'll never quite know for sure, so heck if I know. I do concur that it slightly bothered me that she'd posit stuff about Eliza and her reactions--if you're writing Eliza fanfiction then it doesn't matter,  but in a history book when we only know so much about how Eliza reacted due to her letter burnings, it bugged me.

Overall, I think I'm going with three and a half stars. I have some issues with it, but I do think that it's very comprehensive and the most comprehensive one I've read so far. 

Hope Never Dies

By Andrew Shaffer.

I liked this review:

"This is the kind of story where you don’t so much willingly suspend your disbelief as throw it out the window of a speeding muscle car, like oh, say, the Trans Am that Joe and Barack end up powering through the streets of Wilmington Delaware in the course of this case.

The scene of Obama rescuing Biden from a motorcycle gang by casually firing a sawed-off shotgun while lying about Seal Team 6 waiting in the wings was absolutely priceless."

So yeah, this is real life fanfiction in which Obama and Biden team up again...TO FIGHT CRIME!

I was conflicted about reading this. On the one hand, novelty item (also, it's published by Quirk Books). On the other hand, I generally find Biden to be really boring. I just can't get interested in Biden. I hope he doesn't run for president in the hordes because man, who gets excited about Biden? About the only thing I ever saw about Biden that made him kinda interesting was reading First In Line because of his cute little relationship with Obama. 

I found it at the library and didn't have to commit to buying it, so....let's give it a go.

This book is set in an ambiguous time, perhaps 2017, in which Biden is quietly sulking about having been friend-abandoned by Obama, who is out doing adventure sports and hanging with Bradley Cooper. Has Obama contacted him? Are they playing golf together? Not so much. So Biden is feeling very butthurt and that's a major theme in the book. 

Biden is also known as "Amtrak Joe" for his frequent riding of Amtrak in the past, and he's the sort of guy to make friends with the conductors. One night, Obama, his Secret Service guy Steve* and his dramatic cigarette show up in the yard one night to notify Biden that a conductor friend of his has just died on the tracks--and the police said he had Biden's address on him when he died. Finn the conductor seems to have gotten himself mixed up in something, and Biden, having nothing much else to do but contemplate Obama and wonder if he wants to run for president or not, decides to investigate. You'll never guess who comes along!

• oddly enough, Obama only travels with ONE security guy rather than two, come on.

The absurdity of two guys who really can't pass for being anonymous in public at bloody all is an amusing one, particularly the moments when they ditch Steve the Secret Service Agent every time Steve falls ill from say, eating Joe's breakfast. (I seriously wondered if Biden had poisoned his own food to get Steve and his wet-blanket-ness out of the way, but I guess he just got sick from eating real food.) If you want to read about Obama doing lock picking (on a car, I think) or smacking a dude in the head with a shotgun, here's your chance! Biden, on the other hand, picks the codename "Joe Tingler.," hurts his knee and gets a black eye. But he does head butt a guy! And his medal does pay off in the end, adorably. 

More touching is Biden's conflicted feelings about Obama's friend-disappearance, and Obama's eventual explanation about how he felt like he needed to drift off some, or maybe Biden wanted him to? Biden wonders if friends are for children and not something adults do. The two also wonder about their careers and whether or not they ever did any actual good, which is quite touching/sad. While actual conversation about how Trump is trashing their legacy and the entire world is kept to a super bare minimum and barely hedged at, you can feel their feelings and grief even in a relatively silly book like this one is being:

"What does your heart tell you?" "That I was put on this earth to serve, and by God that's what I've done. The question is, when is it enough?"
Barack took a deep breath, then exhaled. "It's never enough. I'd give away every dollar I have--and I practically do, some years--to fix what's wrong with our country. To fix what's wrong with the world." "But like you said, it's never enough," I said. "So why do we keep doing it?" "To make a difference," Barack said. "And have we?"
"Made a difference?" "Yeah," I said. "Have we made a difference?"
He closed his eyes. "I don't know, Joe. I just don't know."

Hell, even I want to tear up at that.

While the case itself is a bit weak, I wasn't expecting Agatha Christie, so that's fine. Overall it's done well enough and works with the issues of presidential/vice presidential crimefighting fairly well, I suppose. But you're really here for the silly lines, the buddy cop comedy, and the bro-ness of your favorite presidential relationship that you miss. And that works well. Like I said, I'm not super interested in Biden IRL, but the dad-joking, earnest-but-butthurt personality of Biden combined with the "even if you weren't black you'd be cool" natural chill and quiet badassery of Obama, makes it a fun read. 

Quote Corner (all quotes by fictional Biden unless said otherwise):

• Biden isn't threatened by his wife reading Harlequins on her e-reader. "See, your Uncle Joe had something those men would never have: a Presidential Medal of Freedom."
• Biden is the king of dad jokes: "She'd heard the joke before. I still got a kick out of it. The good jokes never get old."
• Another Biden joke: "A man had two sons. One went out to sea, and the other became vice president. Neither were heard from again."
• Biden compares a guy to being as thin as a railroad spike and then says, "The railroad spike I didn't know." This is awkward. 
• "I realized I didn't need a gun. I wanted a gun. Instead I pulled out my Presidential Medal of Freedom."
• Biden decides they need disguises. He puts on a hat that says "Kiss My Bass" and gets Obama a Phillies hat. After Obama points out that they will still draw attention and everyone's seen him in those sunglasses... "You're saying I need to take them off to disguise myself. How's that?" "You look like Joe Biden either way." 
• Joe watches a girl with waist length blonde hair and then wonders, "How do you think she uses the toilet?" 
• After Biden points out that the Geico Gecko is British rather than Australian like Obama thinks, Obama is all, "I just don't know about you sometimes, Joe. I just don't know."
• "Son of a butternut biscuit. We got bamboozled."
• "I'm not asking you to cover for me while I sneak Marilyn Monroe in the back door of the White House." -Obama to his Secret Service agent Steve. 
• "I'm so hungry I could eat the balls off a low-flying goose." 
• How's Steve taking it after being ditched? "Pretty well, all things considered. He did lose the forty-fourth president of the United States." -Obama
• Obama and Biden agree to tell their wives they had a sleepover, basically. Jill asks Biden what the guest room was like. Biden has no idea because he's never been to their DC house. "I stayed with Barack in the master bedroom. Michelle was out of town, and Barack didn't want to sleep alone." Jill is all, "I'm sure you did." 

Overall, I give it three and a half stars. If you're into the subject matter (Obama/Biden, dad jokes, trains, presidential badassery), you should enjoy this. 

Impeachment: An American History

By Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, Peter Baker and Jeffrey A. Engel.

"Any impeachment, however legitimate or not, however wise or not, rewrites the rules for the presidents who follow--until the next one comes along and rewrites them all over again." -Peter Baker 

Four historical scholars got together to write a chapter apiece on the few impeachments (or the uh, one that should have happened) and then finish up by analyzing how this could apply to Trump.

Andrew Johnson (chapter quotes by Jon Meacham) essentially just pissed off enough people to bring on the impeachment, with the inciting incident being his firing of Edwin Stanton when nobody else wanted him to fire the guy. 

"For his obstructionism, Johnson was eventually impeached (but not convicted) by a Republican majority in Congress that had come to see him as an impediment to the work of the nation. His impeachment illustrates a fundamental truth about the American system: The process of removing a president from office is as much political in nature as it is legal. Repubicans held overwhelming majorities in both chambers throughout Johnson's term... and many of them wanted Johnson out. After much searching they finally found a pretext for it in 1867-68: a purported violation of the uninterestingly titled Tenure of Office Act."

However, there were four separate attempts to get him impeached before the final one in 1868. 

"In the story of Johnson and his showdown with the Republicans of the day, we can see how impeachment is a weapon of politics--and that any era can see how impeachment is a weapon of politics--and that any era can find itself amid a crisis over the removal of a president if the passions of the hour are ferocious enough." 

"For our purposes the essential lesson of the Johnson impeachment is how political passion and national division found expression in the attempt to remove a president while his term was still unfolding." The actual reasons for wanting to get rid of him--his bigotry, incompetence, etc.--weren't impeachable offenses, apparently. "Taken all in all, the Johnson case suggested that impeachment could be undertaken for reasons of political conflict but would be pursued only along more technical grounds."

Alas, we never quite got to see a Nixon impeachment, which makes Timothy Naftali a bit challenged in writing about it. What he points out is that "The impeachment process rests on the presumption that Congress can get what it needs to pass judgment on the chief executive. One of the discoveries of the Impeachment Summer of 1974 was that this process gets very difficult if the president uses his staff and the resources of the executive branch to actively subvert the process." As the evidence piled up though, "The Democrats and the Republicans thought that there was so little opposition they could get the whole thing over with in the House in two days." Naftali posits that Nixon would have most likely been impeached and convicted.

"Peter Rodino and John Doar had been essentially right about the preconditions for a successful presidential impeachment. There had to be a commonly accepted baseline of facts, an atmosphere of trust among the members of the House Judiciary Committee, and a disciplined commitment by the committee chair and the inquiry staff to bitpartisanship.." However, there had been evidence of Nixon's criminal behavior for eight months before and "yet there was no predictable way to ensure his removal." Getting his tapes before he could destroy them worked out, and both parties were willing to take risks to get him out if necessary.

As for Bill Clinton, Peter Baker mentions that Clinton had a point that other presidents had had affairs without having to tell everyone and a grand jury, but standards had changed since the most horny presidents. Baker thinks that Clinton's strategy of lying, stonewalling, and denying everything for months diminished the shock by the time he finally fessed up, so the political momentum never quite got far enough. People voted among party lines and well, there you go.

"When the dust settled, even some key Republicans concluded they had gone too far. No impeachment will succeed, they learned,, if it is not bipartisan." Also, the crime just didn't seem that bad at the time...though it did pave the way for say, Trump and his pussy-grabbing/porn star payoffs, etc. to get into office. 

"If the Andrew Johnson impeachment was judged by history to be illegitimate because it essentially litigated a policy dispute rather than a high crime and if the Richard Nixon scandal was judged to be clear-cut in meeting the standard for removing a president from office, then the Clinton episode fell somewhere in the murky middle. It was neither a slam-dunk obvious case that compelled conviction nor was it easy to dismiss out of hand. A president should not be allowed to violate the law, and yet there was no consensus that this particular violation was so egregious as to trigger the ultimate constitutional sanction. In the end, as the framers anticipated, impeachment is a political action, not a legal one. It is, in a sense, another campaign to be won."

Jeffrey A. Engel gets to write what we're all interested in these days. He notes that impeachment crises have sped up by comparison, and notes that Rudy Giuliani threatened that Hillary Clinton would be impeached within a year if elected--I sadly totally agree with that, btw. Engel notes that the threat of impeachment started really early in this case and is concerned with "voters and politicians seemingly so comfortable with invalidating elections." No safe honeymoon for Trump here, but I say, did he deserve one when he was committing various shit from day one? At least everyone else had to warm up to what they did. Engel doesn't think we're guaranteed to have democracy survive a fourth impeachment attempt, but then again, I'm not at all sure it'll survive without it either.

"The history of impeachments teaches us not only to be wary of going down that perilous road again, but each case additionally provides a useful insight should a fourth impeachment attempt case ever arise." 

We've had plenty of jerk presidents before--what made Andrew Johnson different? That he directly contradicted congressional will. What did we learn from it? That personal conviction trumped party allegiances in that case. "Johnson's case thus teaches that should a future president be impeached and come to trial over an issue whose adjudication requires direct reading and interpretation of the Constitution itself, we should expect senators to at least consider voting across party lines." 

Engel thinks that Naftali proves that Nixon could very well have survived and completed his entire term except that well, things didn't go that way. But once there was undeniable proof of his abuse of power... When support starts to go, it really starts to go. There was a "smoking gun" of his guilt. Proof matters. "Should a future president find him- or herself confronted by hard evidence of impeachable offenses--be they documents, tapes, bank records, or something else the general public can easily understand--the longer their record of denial the faster it will drag them down." But the evidence has to be irrefutable, BUT these days everything can be doctored, so what would be good enough to convince literally everyone? People trust Trump no matter what and just don't care. 

As for Clinton, he wasn't truly in danger, and party politics won out and all Democrats voted to keep him. 

"Only if a future impeachment case plays out like Johnson's, in which senators are called to consider their consciences as well as their constituents, and at the same time like Nixon's with conclusive evidence strong enough to justify lawmaker's breaking party discipline, should a president truly fear impeachment. Such scenarios might involve a president demonstrated to be under the sway of a foreign power, or who profited from his office, or who consciously overstepped the Constitution's constraints on executive power."  Engel thinks that it doesn't matter if crimes were committed, it matters if someone lied to win office in the first place, i.e. not disclosing that he didn't give a shit about the Constitution, this could get him convicted. 

However, since "we live in a tribal political environment unable to agree on basic facts, we are unlikely to generate the widespread moral outrage necessary to prompt senators to risk eviction by voting against their constituents or against their party. It would require a genuine constitutional crisis of the sort Johnson's opponents generated, coupled with a clear train of irrefutable evidence agreed upon by all sides such as sunk Nixon, and then frosted by a president's wild unpopularity, the very opposite of Clinton, for his judges in any impeachment trial to make their vote anything more than a referendum on the prior election's results." 

Sigh.

I think this is well done overall, if depressing as fuck. And I think adding a Nixon chapter is kind of a stretch but I can see why they did it. Overall I think I give it 3.5 stars. 

Fear: Trump in the White House

By Bob Woodward.

Finally got this at the library. 

This isn't quite as fun and dishy as say, other memoirs of the horrors of this administration. Mostly it just focuses on the policy decisions and how everything sucks every time Trump communicates. Clearly Bob got a lot of, to quote from the Source Notes in the back on every single chapter, "multiple deep background interviews with firsthand sources." Which is to say, a lot of the folks who left unhappy. It's pretty clear that say, Lindsay Graham, Steve Bannon, Rob Porter, Reince Priebus and Gary Cohn must have had a lot to say, whereas folks like Sean Spicer and Hope Hicks must not have contributed because they are barely mentioned in this shitshow. The author mentions that his assistant "made sure we built the story around specific scenes with specific dates, named participants and accounts of what happened."

The Note to Readers specifies:

"Interviews for this book were conducted under the journalist ground rule of "deep background." This means that all the information could be used but I would not say who provided it. The book is drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand participants and witnesses to these events. Nearly all allowed me to tape-record our interviews so the story could be told with more precision. When I have attributed exact quotations, thoughts or conclusions to the participants, that information comes from the person, a colleague with direct knowledge, or from meeting notes, personal diaries, files and government or personal documents. President Trump declined to be interviews for this book."

Fun facts and quotes time!

As you've probably heard by now, this book starts with a prologue in which Gary Cohn, "top economic adviser in the White House," managed to save us all by hiding a piece of paper from Trump so he didn't sign it. That piece of paper being the one that would terminate our free trade with South Korea. "Got to protect the country." Or alternately, "It's not what we did for the country, it's what we saved him from doing."  Rob Porter "told an associate" that a third of his job was "trying to react to some of the really dangerous ideas that he had and try to give him reasons to believe that maybe they weren't such good ideas." 

After that fun excerpt, we move on to the start of the idea of Trump really running for president, and Bannon's reaction to the words "He's thinking of running for president." "Of what country?" Followed by "I don't have time to jerk off, dude." 

David Bossie, a conservative activist/Republican investigator, told Trump that he had to be pro-life but he's been very pro-choice. Trump changed immediately. When told he has a track record, he said, "That can be fixed." Also, Bossie pointed out there's a public record of when people vote and you've voted ONCE. Bossie tells Trump to start writing checks to congressmen and senators and write a policy book (HAHAHAHAHA). Bannon's reaction afterwards is "Zero chance. ... The fucker will not write one check," and "He'll never do a policy book. Give me a fucking break. First off, nobody will buy it. It was a waste of time except for the fact that it was insanely entertaining." 

Priebus tried to get Trump not to call Mexicans rapists and told him that "we've been working really hard to win over Hispanics." So that worked well. 

For all the crap about Scaramucci (not a source for this, I'm guessing) and Bannon's dick-sucking, Bannon later said, "I reached out and sucked Reince Priebus' dick on August 15 and told the establishment, we can't win without you." 

There is a term for going on all five Sunday morning talk shows: "the full Ginsburg" (after Monica Lewinsky's lawyer who did it in 1998). Poor ol' Giuliani achieved this dubious feat about the Access Hollywood tapes, and his reward from Trump was to be called a baby, by Trump. Was it really worth it, Rudy? Is it EVER? 

When interviewing for the national security adviser job, McMaster was told by Bannon to wear his uniform and not lecture Trump: Trump was the guy who never went to class, took a note or got a syllabus. "The night before the final, he comes in at midnight from the fraternity house, puts on a pot of coffee, takes your notes, memorizes as much as he can, walks in at 8 in the morning and gets a C. And that's good enough. He's going to be a billionaire." McMaster pretty much does the dead opposite--lectures Trump and shows up in a regular suit because he called around and was told it wouldn't be appropriate because he's retired. Trump's commentary on his outfit was "He's dressed like a beer salesman." The author snarks, "Bannon, noted for his terrible wardrobe, agreed." 

Dear lord, the ass kissing of Lindsay Graham. "Trump said he shouldn't have publicly given out Graham's cell phone number." "That was the highlight of my campaign," Graham joked. "What's your new number?" Trump asked." DON'T GIVE IT OUT, DON'T GIVE IT.... oh damn, you gave it out. You moron. Lindsay also refers to his buddy McCain as "A media whore like me." 

"Tweeting, that's the way I operate." -Trump

One of Sean Spicer's few mentions here is that he tried several times to get Mattis to go on Sunday talk shows. Mattis continued to say no and finally, "Sean, I've killed people for a living. If you call me again, I'm going to fucking send you to Afghanistan. Are we clear?" 

Cohn used to try to communicate to Trump that people want to leave manufacturing. "He realized he was being an asshole by rubbing it in because each month was basically the same, but he didn't care." 

"Several times Cohn just asked the president, "Why do you have these views?" "I just do," Trump replied. "I've had these views for 30 years." "That doesn't mean they're right," Cohn said. "I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn't mean I was right." 

Meet Rob Porter, staff secretary, and what happened after he introduced himself to Trump: "It was clear Trump had no clue what that was or who Porter was. Jared told Trump that Porter was going to structure and order Trump's life. Trump looked at the two of them as if to say, What are you talking about? You're not doing anything like that. No one's going to do that. The president walked away without saying anything to find a TV screen." 

"Trump would go from A to G to L to Z. Or double back into D or S." 

More not-quite-commentary from Rob Porter: "But the hours of raging reminded Porter of what he had read about Nixon's final days in office--praying, pounding the carpet, talking to the pictures of past presidents on the walls." 

"I am the president. I can fire anybody that I want." -Trump

In chapter 21, we meet John Dowd, Trumps lawyer, who starts out as happy to get the gig. "It's no day at the beach," he's warned. "I think I've figured that out," Dowd said. OH YOU POOR SWEET SUMMER CHILD. YOU KNOW NOTHING, JOHN DOWD.

Here's an unattributed bit in which Trump "gave some private advice to a friend who had acknowledged some bad behavior towards women" (uh, Rob Porter, I assume): "You've got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you're dead. That was a big mistake you made. You didn't come out guns blazing and just challenge them. You showed weakness. You've got to be strong. You've got to be aggressive. You've got to push back hard. You've got to deny anything that's said about you. Never admit." 

"Jared remained a mission Priebus failed to accomplish." 

Priebus's other mission: trying to shut off Trump's TV time. He called the presidential bedroom "the devil's workshop" and his favorite early morning/Sunday night TV times "the witching hour." All Priebus can do is make sure Trump doesn't get home until after 9 p.m. Sunday nights. 

On the transgender ban: Priebus lists the four options from "leave it alone" to "ban 'em all," pointing out that the last one increased their likelihood of being sued, and we want to walk you through it on paper." Trump supposedly agrees to talk about it at 10 a.m., but by 8:55 a.m. he's banning them all. 

I'm rolling my eyes at the start of chapter 25, in which we're told all of Rob Porter's high credentials, that he has a better resume than Gorsuch, and he reports that Trump called Priebus a little rat that just scurries around and can be ignored. 

"I go out and give a speech and it's covered by CNN and nobody's watching, nobody cares. I tweet something and it's my megaphone to the world." -Trump

Priebus called Trump's "bleeding from a facelilft" comments "going bananas." Trump was all, "I know what you are going to say. It's not presidential. And guess what? I know it. But I had to do it anyway." 

This book recaps the Priebus firing, and we find out that Kelly had "had to call his wife and explain that he had no choice but to accept after being offered one of the most important jobs in the world via tweet." 

"As a general rule, in relations with Trump, the closer you were, the further away you got. You started with 100 points. You couldn't get more. Kelly had started with 100 points in his jar, and they'd gone down. Being close to Trump, especially in the chief of staff role, meant going down in points. It meant you paid." 

"Because when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That's what happens." -Priebus. 

Rob Porter reports that he spent hours working on a nice speech for Trump to give about Charlottesville, Trump gives it and gets praise, Porter reports that he felt like it was a moment of victory, he had served the president well, this made the endless hours of nonstop work worth it... and then after the news makes it sound like he admitted he did something wrong, he chews out Porter because "I didn't do anything wrong in the first place." Porter later reports that Trump thought "Little Rocket Man" was his best nickname yet and Porter was all, "It is funny, and it certainly seems to have gotten under Kim's skin," but what's the endgame here? 

Pence isn't mentioned much. "As usual, Pence was staying out of the way. He didn't want to be tweeted about or called an idiot. If he were advising Pence, Cohn would have had him do exactly that--stay out of it." 

Kelly: "He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in crazytown. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had." That said, he did make it longer than Priebus. 

Bannon's advice to Trump: "Cut the fucking thing off" (about Trump's 8 hours of TV a day) and "Go play some slap and tickle with Melania." 

Lindsay Graham continues to suck it up, but not the 100% of sucking up that Trump is demanding, apparently. Graham supposedly said, "Why would you want me to tell you you're right when I think you're wrong? Presidents need people that can tell them the truth as they see it. It's up to you to see if I'm full of shit." 

Trump's lawyer Dowd reports that "It was quite a sight seeing the president of the United States fuming like some aggrieved Shakespearean king." 

After Cohn quits: "He's never been wrong yet. He's 71. He's not going to admit he's wrong, ever." 

Dowd reports about his talking with Mueller about the possibility of Mueller talking to Trump. Dowd and Jay Sekulow role-play in front of him. "Jay, how many times did he say I don't know when we talked to him?" "Oh, a dozen, twenty."  ... "Bob, here's my point. You're asking me to sit next to a president who'll get to the third question, screw it up and thereafter, because I'm going to counsel him, he just doesn't know and he doesn't remember. So he's going to say he doesn't remember 20 times..... And the reason he doesn't remember is very simple. One, these facts and these events are of little moment in his life." Woodward then snarks, "Most had taken place early in his presidency." 

The end of the book features Dowd quitting. "He could not say what he knew was true: "You're a fucking liar." That was the problem." Dowd gives him a giant speech about how he feels like he failed as his lawyer because he was unable to persuade Trump to take his advice. "And if I go and sit with you and let you do something that I think is bad for you and will get you in further trouble, then I ought to lose my license." The very last words of the book are, in fact, "You're a fucking liar."

Four stars. It's not quite as much fun dish, but it sure sounds like Certain People let it all hang out here, and it sounds like Woodward was as comprehensive as he could get with who he could get.