DOnald Trump finally won the popular vote. His narrow margin of 1.48% proved to be enough to decimate the Democratic Party. At noon on Inauguration Day, January 20th, Republicans will be at the top of all three branches of the federal government.
This is an amazing moment in American political history, but this year in the book is about how the United States got to this point.
Start with “Rebels” by Joshua Green of Bloomberg News and “Ceasefire” by Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo and attorney and author Ruppe B. Luppen.
Greene focused on three prominent figures on the Democratic left: Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. . Everything conveys a sense of seriousness. Not so much the humor.
Demands to cut police funding and concerns about lax border security have caused chaos. Note: Winning presidential campaigns often cling to cultural centers, especially if they lean left on the economic front. Just ask Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, Luppen and Walker explored the divisions within the Democratic Party, capturing Biden supporters freely bashing the vice president. “Kamala is not ready for prime time,” a “senior White House aide” reportedly said, adding, “She’s not cut out for the job.” Neither was Joe Biden.
“War” is the latest effort by legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to show that Biden & Co. has misjudged its mission from reality. Woodward also reported that the president was closely monitoring the government’s prosecution of his son Hunter. In early December, Biden granted a full pardon to feral children. Saying it’s “controversial” doesn’t cover it.
That’s exactly what Woodward asked a source to say about President Trump, too. “How he interacts with President Putin and what he says to President Putin remains a mystery to me,” said Dan Coats, director of national intelligence in Trump’s first administration. Court remains convinced there’s something there.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is currently President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security. In April, she released her massive self-titled album No Going Back. This ruined her chances of being chosen as President Trump’s running mate and spawned numerous talk show jokes. The Guardian has revealed that she casually killed a 14-month-old dog, Cricket, and an unnamed magnificent goat she deemed untrainable. Nom also falsely claimed to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Tulsi Gabbard (former congresswoman, former progressive, and now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence) and Peter Navarro (former prison inmate and incoming Trade Counselor) also published books. Gabbard’s “Dangerous War” was an awkward mix of memoir and screed. Navarro, who was found guilty of contempt of Congress in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, used the New MAGA Deal to promote President Trump’s policies and to make the most of that dark day in Washington, D.C. falsely rereported what happened.
Biden’s first White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, also dabbled in fiction with “Say More.” Psaki now wrote on MSNBC that the president never looked at his watch during the repatriation ceremony for soldiers killed in the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Photos and eyewitness accounts of Gold Star families said otherwise. A formal retraction was then carried out.
In “At War With Ourselves,” HR McMaster looks back on the 14 months he spent as President Trump’s National Security Advisor. “I couldn’t help but think that living at the base of an active volcano was an apt metaphor for serving in President Trump’s White House,” the retired general wrote.
Mr. McMaster also does not shy away from criticizing Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden. He criticized President Obama for the Iran nuclear deal and Biden for easing sanctions on Tehran and Venezuela and easing “security on the Mexican border.”
President Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, published a memoir of the same name, also known as the 180-page double-spaced Blame-shifting and evasion. She ignored personal responsibility for plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech and declared abortion a fundamental right.
Other Trumps also picked up pens. The president’s nephew, Fred Trump, published All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Get This Way, a fast-paced and engaging portrait of dysfunction. The author’s son has suffered from a lifelong neurological disorder. According to Fred Trump, Donald Trump…doesn’t really get it.
Fred’s sister Mary Trump has published her third book, Who Could Ever Love You, which goes into more detail about her uncle, but also about her difficult home life. Sometimes she wishes Trump wasn’t her name.
Bill and Hillary Clinton still refuse to leave the stage. Each published a new memoir.
In Something Lost, Something Gained, Hilary continues to be haunted by what could have been. “As Faulkner wrote, ‘The past never dies; it’s not even the past,'” she wrote, citing Faulkner’s oft-quoted line that everyone seems to know. “I live with it every day.”
Bill took a walk down memory lane with Citizen and sent “good luck” wishes to Monica Lewinsky, the 22-year-old intern with whom he had a sexual relationship that led to his impeachment. Ms. Clinton also briefly investigated her interactions with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and sex offender who died in prison in 2019 and whose ties to Mr. Trump are constantly debated.
Back in Washington DC, a very badly behaved man is in the news again. President Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is at a dead end. His pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is clinging to the curb.
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In September 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified that Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, sexually assaulted her when she was in high school. In March 2024, Ford released One Way Back: A Memoir. In short, she sued Mr. Kavanaugh for defamation. “In fact, he was in the room with me that night in 1982. I believe he knows what happened. Even if he was clouded by alcohol, he should know. Wisely, Mr. Kavanaugh remains calm.
During the election, Trump repeatedly threatened to contest the results. Scholars Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman have provided “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” an in-depth look at pressure points that President Trump may have exploited. In their eyes, the risk that electors would be forced to change their votes was “grave.” Trump won in the usual way, but the author’s warning applies. The system is vulnerable.
On the same front, veteran investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Kleidman published “Find Me the Votes,” an easy-to-read account of President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. For a while, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis emerged as a hero to Trump opponents. Lately, she has been away from the incident. Both men claimed that their indiscreet relationship with Nathan Wade had resulted in casualties. The incident stopped at the ground level.
The future Democratic presidential candidate’s book was a rarity. But in the summer, as Biden’s campaign collapsed, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer released a decidedly campaign-y memoir, “True Gretsch.” This light read depicts personal growth and political rise. Even if she runs in 2028, the Clintons are showing that she doesn’t have to limit herself to just one memoir.
Outside of campaigns, the lobbying industry has come under scrutiny in The Wolf of K Street, by Pulitzer Prize-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter Brody Mullins and his brother, Politico’s Luke Mullins. received. This tightly-stitched book of over 600 pages centers on the suicide of Evan Morris, a lobbyist for a major pharmaceutical company. The article ends with the tired line, “No matter what new obstacles present themselves, K Street has always invented new ways to exercise its power over Washington.”
Highlights: Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles is a former lobbyist, as is Pam Bondi, who ran for attorney general after lobbying for Amazon, General Motors, Uber, Qatar and private prisons.
Among other books on big political topics, Tevi Troi has published Power and Money. Troy, who previously served as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in the George W. . He emphasized that Trump’s new budget critic, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, received a big boost from government contracts.
The People’s Party, announced last year, continues to attract attention. “Biden is languishing among core Democratic voters, working-class voters of color, who were once the mainstay of the People’s Party,” Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini wrote. Ta. Pollsters aren’t always Nostradamus. But not all pollsters are Nostradamus believers. Mr. Ruffini has been proven right.
But this year’s most memorable political book wasn’t about American politics. Alexei Navalny left us with an exhilarating piece of writing in “Patriot: A Memoir.” Before being murdered in an Arctic prison on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian dissident wrote lovingly about his family, doubled down on his faith, and celebrated the everyday, all the while making his own breakthroughs. He was cheerfully aware of his fate. He also made a scathing indictment of tyranny through Hogwarts and Middle-earth.
“When asked what it’s like to die from a chemical weapon, two associations come to mind: the Dementors from Harry Potter and the Nazgûl from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” Navalny said after being poisoned with Novichok in 2020. He writes about his near-fatal injuries: There is also an order from President Putin. “A Dementor’s kiss doesn’t hurt. The victim simply feels the life slipping away from them. The Nazgul’s main weapon is their terrifying ability to drain people of their will and strength.”
President Trump, who has not yet taken office, has called for the jailing of members of the House committee that investigated the riot. Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming and new Democratic senator Adam Schiff of California are squarely in his crosshairs. He also vowed to pardon the Jan. 6 riot “on day one.”
Meanwhile, President Trump has abdicated responsibility for the impact of the tariffs under consideration. “We can’t guarantee anything. We can’t guarantee tomorrow,” he protested.
Confusion lurks. This is the content of the book that will be written in the future.
