• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 August #1
  John Bolton, step back into the choir. It's Mary Trump's turn for a solo. Donald Trump's only niece, the daughter of his older brother, Freddy, offers a compact book that is part family history and part exposé, written with the astuteness of someone with a Ph.D in clinical psychology . She begins at a White House dinner, a small affair to honor her two aunts' birthdays, a set piece that crystallizes the complicated and noxious interworkings of the Trump dynasty. She then goes on to spend much of the book explaining the relationship between her grandfather Fred Trump, a bloodless, humorless dictator, and her dad, Freddy, his oldest son, who was destroyed by his inability to live up to Fred's expectations. Freddy's alcoholism led to a fatal heart attack at age 42, and that, in turn, led to Mary and her brother being cut out of Freddy's portion of her grandparents' will. They fought for Freddy's share, but Donald and his siblings banded together, pressuring his niece and nephew to drop the case, including taking away health insurance for Fred Trump's very ill great-grandchild. Decades later, Mary's ability to access financial data from the case records made it possible for her to provide key documents to the New York Times, which was doing an investigative report on the Trump family finances (that piece eventually won a Pulitzer). Woven throughout the narrative is the often-cynical role Donald Trump played in the family dysfunction, along with a detailed chronicle of the president's extensive emotional infirmities. Mary echoes what's been written many, many times before: Trump is incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information. Written with passion, this holds attention because it offers a more intimate look at Trump—or, perhaps, it's just an episode of Succession in which we're all forced to live. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Mary L. Trump holds a PhD from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and taught graduate courses in trauma, psychopathology, and developmental psychology. She lives with her daughter in New York.