Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bob Woodward is a reporter, and Fear reads very much like a very long newspaper story. Lots of quotes from individuals, paraphrasing where necessary, coming from "deep background interviews" or other published works. It's all in service of one thing, trying to make sense of the erratic first year of the Trump White House. (This is in contrast to Fire and Fury, the other major book thus far about the Trump White House, which I felt was much more of an entertainment work.)

There's not much in the way of consistent narrative in Fear, as it reports notable interactions between various actors in mostly chronological order. It jumps back and forth between issues as they were more or less important at the time. This can make it difficult to follow, but is necessary because Woodward is mostly aiming to describe President Trump's interactions with his staff and provide a glimpse into his state of mind, both which changed regularly as events progressed.

Largely this shows a negative picture of Trump, as a man who has little patience for the opinions of others, a very limited attention span, and a habitual liar. But it's not all negative. Woodward also shows the President's real sadness and anger over deaths in the Syrian civil war, for example, and how he did his best to console families of deceased service members. I was impressed with Woodward's work reporting the complexities of the President, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions.

For me, that conclusion is that the Trump White House that Woodward describes largely revolved around people trying to keep their leader from doing real harm to himself or the country. Trump would propose action, like doing a personal interview with Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation or withdrawing from the South Korea-US trade agreement or imposing steel tariffs. Then the staff would frantically try to delay or water down those actions until the President either lost interest (usually) or could be convinced to take another course (rarely). Sometimes the staff was successful, sometimes not.

The book also painted several key White House figures in a different light than I'd seen before. The one that stood out most in my mind was Rob Porter, who resigned in disgrace after being accused of domestic violence. But before that, Porter had been a very important influence on President Trump, often moderating some of the more extreme actions that the President wanted to take. Another is Gary Cohn, a former Wall Street executive who was instrumental in pushing through the Republican tax cuts. The extensive efforts that Cohn went through to fight against Trump's anti-free-trade actions (tariffs, withdrawal from free trade treaties) are described in detail in Fear. I wouldn't say I have a better view of either man, as I still think both did some incredibly harmful things, but at least it's a more complete view of how much worse things could have been without their efforts.

I can't exactly say that I enjoyed Fear, because it's not an easy or uplifting read. But I certainly feel better informed.

My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper

My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I know Ellie Kemper from her role as Kimmy in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which is hilarious and touching and ridiculous, often all at once. When I heard that she'd written a book (via an appearance on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me), I wanted to see if the book was as entertaining as her acting. Good news, it absolutely is.

As one would expect, Squirrel Days contains many anecdotes from Ellie's life and career. Unlike many similar books, this one tells you right up front (page 4!) that much of it may be made up. And I think this describes the tone of the book quite well. The author is an entertainer, knows how to amuse an audience, and is going to make that happen without letting small details like complete accuracy get in the way.

Which is not to say that the whole book is nothing but outrageous stories. Most of it is fairly normal life experience, from childhood antics to career decisions to friends and family. Which are generally described not just as what happened, but what Ellie had been thinking and hoping for and often utterly failed to achieve. Usually in extremely amusing fashion.

I'm sure that not everyone will love this book as much as I did, as I think you need the right sense of humor to be as entertained by it as I was. For your sake, I hope you have that, so you can have as much fun reading Squirrel Days as I did.