“President Trump gave a full pardon to a longtime friend who last year wrote a glowing book about Trump’s successes,” the Washington Post reports.
“Conrad Black was convicted in 2007 on fraud charges, including alleged embezzlement, and obstruction of justice. He served more than three years in prison and was deported to his native Canada after he was released in 2012. He was barred from returning to the United States for 30 years.”
Michael Wolff — who enraged President Trump with his international bestseller Fire and Fury, about pandemonium in the first-year White House — will be out June 4 with a sequel, Siege: Trump Under Fire, Axios reports.
The book begins with Trump’s second year as president and ends with the delivery of the Mueller report: “Siege reveals an administration that is perpetually beleaguered by investigations and a president who is increasingly volatile, erratic, and exposed.”
“Barack Obama’s presidential memoir, which many people had thought was going to come out in 2019, won’t be published this year, according to a person familiar with the writing process,” The Atlantic reports.
“George F. Will will be out June 4 with The Conservative Sensibility, his first book in five years, and his first on politics in over a decade. And it doesn’t mention President Trump a single time,” Axios reports.
Anthony Weiner, “the serial sexter and former congressman — who is now living in a Bronx halfway house after doing hard time for sexting a teenager — is skulking around Manhattan’s publishing houses trying to shop a book proposal,” the New York Post reports.
“So far, interest has been flaccid.”
And, of course, the Post‘s front page is priceless.
Coming soon: 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought About Each Other – and What It Means to Us by Mike Purdy.
“From the founding fathers to the age of Trump, our presidents have dished out pointed and acerbic insults about other presidents.”
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page is selling a print edition of the Mueller report, along with his own introduction.
Washington Post: “Sure, it is a little longer than necessary. Too many footnotes and distracting redactions. The writing is often flat, and the first half of the book drags, covering plenty of terrain that has been described elsewhere. The story shifts abruptly between riveting insider tales and dense legalisms. Its protagonist doesn’t really come alive until halfway through, once Volume I (on Russian interference) gives way to Volume II (on obstruction of justice). The title — far too prosaic, really — feels like a missed opportunity. And it hardly helps that the book’s earliest reviewer, Attorney General William Barr, seems to have willfully misunderstood the point of it; he probably should not have been assigned to review it at all.”
“Yet as an authoritative account, the Mueller report is the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency.”
Even though you can download a copy for free, the Mueller Report is also a bestseller on Amazon.
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was recently in talks to write a book… Multiple publishing industry sources told the Daily Beast that the freshman Democrat retained the talent agency CAA and took meetings earlier this year about writing a potential book.”
“The project, one industry source said, was ultimately pulled, but for reasons that remain mysterious.”
“The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made a book of interviews with Gore Vidal an unexpected best-seller,” the AP reports.
“Assange was carrying a copy of Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State & Vidal on America when he was arrested Thursday at the Ecuadoran embassy in London.”
“By Friday afternoon, the 2014 publication was No. 35 on Amazon.com.”
The New York Times interviews Robert Caro about writing his incredible books on Lyndon Johnson:
NYT: Do you have a title for the last book?
CARO: I do.
NYT: Will you tell me what it is?
CARO: No.
If you haven’t yet read the Caro books, you really need to.
Daily Beast: “Since at least mid-2017, Trump has been talking about the post-presidential memoir he will write; or, more likely, have ghostwritten on his behalf. He is planning on it being explosive and assumes (not without reason) that it will be a New York Times bestseller. And since the early days of his administration, he has conveyed his eagerness to get started on the project.”
“Another source, who is a friend of Trump’s, said the president has casually discussed how such a book could be used to dish dirt and settle scores with his foes in the media, the Democratic Party, non-loyal Republicans, law enforcement, and even individuals in his own administration. Trump, according to this person, noted that this memoir could help ‘correct’ the ‘fake news’ already published in popular books and newspapers, and give him the opportunity to spin a juicy yarn on his time at the heights of power.”
“The source recalled there was at least one time when he heard the president say, ‘that’ll go great in a book,’ referring to something that had just happened in a social setting. The implication left was that Trump was passively taking note of potential fodder.”
Washington Post: “During a Republican retreat at Camp David last year, President Trump seemed particularly enthralled as Gary Cohn, then his chief economic adviser, delivered a briefing on infrastructure. The president impressed the assembled lawmakers with his apparent interest in the presentation, nodding along and scribbling furious notes.”
“But Trump’s notes ‘had nothing to do with infrastructure,’ journalists Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer write in their new book, The Hill to Die On. Instead, Trump had scrawled ‘Sloppy Steve’ atop his index card, followed by ‘copious notes’ criticizing Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist whom he had fired several months earlier.”
“‘As Cohn had detailed his plans to rebuild America’s roads, the president was writing down how he wanted to trash Steve Bannon the next time someone asked him about it,’ the authors write, in one of buzzy scenes that pepper the book.”
Former Gov. John Kasich, who is reportedly mulling a presidential bid in 2020, has a new book coming later this year: It’s Up to Us: Ten Little Ways We Can Bring About Big Change.
A close adviser to ex-Defense Secretary James Mattis has written a “sometimes shocking” book detailing the “complicated relationship” between Mattis and President Trump, and describing how Mattis worked to block some of Trump’s proposals, NBC News reports.
Written by the secretary’s former communications director, retired Navy Cmdr. Guy “Bus” Snodgrass, Holding the Line: Inside the Pentagon With General Mattis is scheduled for publication in October.
Out next month: Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America by Jared Cohen.
“John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield’s successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield’s assassination; but he reformed the civil service.”
“Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
