Book Review: The Art of the Deal

By Donald J Trump

The Art of the Deal is the best, hugest, and most successful treatise on the conduct of business ever written. If you don´t happen to agree you are a stiff and a lightweight. As Trump himself frequently tells his large crowds at campaign rallies, his two favorite books are The Bible, and coming in at a distant second, The Art of the Deal. As Bill Maher aptly put it “One of them is about a perfect being who teaches humanity the right way to live, and the other one is The Bible”. Trump likes his Magnum Opus so much, in fact, that any fan who holds a copy aloft during a campaign rally will cause The Donald to stop explaining how the wall will be built and instead sign the proffered book while lavishly complementing his adoring fan. Before resuming his speech Trump will then admonish Barack Obama for his lack of leadership and urge him to read his book.  

It is all too easy to get carried away when dealing with a man whom Charles Dickens would have called “too Dickensian”. As a somewhat professional reviewer of literary works I shall attempt to lay out the sage advice that Trump deigns to share and also draw upon his own words to explain some aspects of his presidential campaign that has puzzled media pundits. Although I enjoyed reading The Art of the Deal, I would like to point out that this isn´t an endorsement of his campaign, I´m not stumping for Trump.

Born in Queens in 1946, Donald Trump has real estate in his blood. His father, Fred Trump, came from humble beginnings but managed to make it good as a real estate developer through grit and hard work, the kind of man that Republicans have worshipped since the dawn of time. Fred Trump mostly built rent controlled apartments in Brooklyn and Queens, and stayed away from the glitzy Manhattan skyline that Donald Trump set out to, quite literally if you take Trump Tower into account, remake in his own image. His father, Trump writes, was a tough businessman who didn´t much care for fripperies and wasn´t impressed by high rollers. No surprise then that his father found all the expensive marble lavished upon Trump Tower and the bi-monthly polishing of all brass railing in the building a bit too extravagant. It makes you think that if Donald Trump`s business acumen runs in the family, his penchant for over-the-top drama does not.

The first chapter of the second best book ever written is titled Dealing: A Week in The Life. Any office drone or wage slave who has given up on the dream of upward mobility may peruse these pages to learn how one of the wealthiest people in the world lived during the neon tinted days of 1986, when the book was written. Trump rises early to sip his coffee and read the newspaper, before taking the elevator down to his office (He still lives and does most of his work in Trump Tower). His days are long and filled and deal-making as well as with meetings with interesting and influential people. On a typical Friday, according to the second best book ever written, he meets with a Greek shipping magnate as well as numerous architects and contractors working for him, before sauntering down to the lobby where David Letterman awaits his arrival with a film crew in tow. A week in the life is clearly tough and hectic. Therefore it´s no wonder that, when picking the marble to be used for renovating his private apartments shortly before meeting with the shipping magnate and Mr. Letterman, Trump opts for “…as close as you´re going to get, in the twentieth century, to the quality of Versailles”. If Trump, who claims Swedish ancestry, were to find himself at a dinner party in Stockholm, he might want to tone it down a bit and say that the marble was a leftover from a previous construction job and that the quarrymen were unionized.

The surprising, and surprisingly resilient, GOP front-runner has had his fair share of controversies since he launched his campaign in late June. When confronted with adversity, Trump has consistently gone on the attack, even when a lighter touch might have been more advisable. In the second best book ever written he explains:

“I´m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. The risk is that you will make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don´t recommend this approach to everyone. But my experience is that if you´re fighting for something you believe in…things usually work out for the best in the end.”

Picking a fight with Fox News after the first Republican debate might not have seemed to be particularly wise for a populist candidate, but since he perceived that the questions he was asked by Megyn Kelly amounted to a slander on his larger than life character, he saw no choice but to leap into the breach.

The second aspect of the Trump campaign that is elaborated upon in The Art of the Deal, is his reluctance to hire pollsters or any kind of political consultants. Trump is himself, and unabashedly so, when he speaks to a fired up Crowd in Jacksonville Florida or Reno Nevada. Trump writes that he places no trust in committees or marketing surveys, instead he has always relied (or so he says), on his gut instinct and what people are telling him on the ground.

“…I don´t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions… If I´m thinking about buying a piece of property, I’ll ask the people who live nearby about the area…I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that´s when I make a decision.”

After he has let you in on a week of the Trump life and laid out the elements of his philosophy, see the quotes above, prospective readers are treated to a dazzling account of successful business deals. These include buying and renovating the Commodore Hotel in New York and building a gigantic Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. I don´t know the full details about the golden haired property mogul´s business deals, but if his own account is anything to go by then he must certainly be among the most successful people in his business. Some will no doubt point out that his businesses have gone bankrupt several times, the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City that he lauds in The Art of the Deal among them. I suspect the truth might lie somewhere in between these conflicting accounts.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Art of the Deal, even if the pages were sometimes so permeated with Trumpness that it became almost cloying. The book would be ideal for someone who is learning English since the language is so simple and straightforward, with a distinct lack of verbal ostentation or flourish. That, however, isn´t what you’re after in this genre, and when it comes to giving a glimpse into a life where everything is never enough and modesty is a problem that losers are saddled with, The Art of the Deal delivers. The one thing I wouldn´t want delivered to my doorstep, though, is the special Donald Trump edition of the Cadillac Allante that GM, in all their wisdom, decided to make.

Book Review: The girl in the spider´s web

By David Lagercrantz

The Girl in the spider´s web is the fourth installment in the best-selling Millennium series. Keen readers will no doubt be aware of the fact that the series creator and the author of the previous three books in the series, Stieg Larsson, sadly passed away a few years ago. There are some who would passionately argue that this book which I´m about to review should never have been written in the first place. I´m not about to wade into that debate, mainly because I wouldn´t know what I´m talking about, but I am going to talk about the book itself, which is a convincing enough work of fiction to stand on its own merits.

The reins of the Millennium series have been handed to David Lagercrantz, author of international footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović’s autobiography, I am Zlatan: My story on and off the field. This may not sound particularly relevant, but I assure you that it most certainly is. Writing about Ibrahimović’s spectacular life required the verbal ambidextrousness of Ernest Hemingway ditching his trademark staccato sentences to write a Tudor drama in iambic pentameter. Several of the brilliant and hilarious quotes from the book were actually not taken from lengthy interviews with Ibrahimović himself. Like a consummate musician delivering a symphony on the fly, Lagercrantz improvised quotes that perfectly encapsulated Mr. Ibrahimović. If anyone could pull this off then, it would had to have been Lagercrantz.

Although he possesses left of center political views like the late Stieg Larsson, the two men are very different. A scion of privilege whose father was the editor of the country’s largest newspaper for twenty years, Lagercrantz´s origins story is considerably different from that of Stieg Larsson. Stieg came from very humble, blue collar beginning. His father worked in a smelting plant and later died of arsenic poisoning. It´s very rare that an author´s life is more exciting than that of his characters, but in 1977 Stieg went to Eritrea to train a squad of female recruits to the Eritrean People´s Liberation Front in the use of mortars, a weapons system he had mastered after he was conscripted into the Swedish military.

Little more than a year has passed since the events in the last book, The girl who kicked the hornet´s nest. The equal parts dreary and world weary journalist Mikael Blomkvist returns together with everyone´s favorite female antihero, Lisbeth Salander. There has been a lot of talk about whether Lagercrantz could “handle” Lisbeth Salander. The answer is quite simple, the Lisbeth Salander he portrays is not the same character as Stieg Larsson wrote about because that would simply be an impossibility. As an author entrusted with carrying on with a late colleagues work, Lagercrantz should be allowed a certain amount of leeway. I was not disappointed with the new Lisbeth Salander, and she wasn´t that different from the old one. The die-hard fans will probably not agree with me, but the rest of you can relax, the ship has been left in good hands.

The plot centers around the artificial intelligence research of the deeply flawed but brilliant genius Franz Balder and National Security Agency, possibly the least loved government agency in the history of the United States besides the DMV. With an ageing Mikael Blomkvist´s career in journalism on the ropes, a scoop about Balder and his ground-breaking research might be his last and best chance to stay relevant as a left of center journalist who is so noble he can´t be bought off by special interests and who is so boring that he makes Mitt Romney leading the Sunday sermon in a Mormon church seem interesting by comparison. Thankfully Lisbeth Salander is, as always, pursuing her own shadowy agenda, and the two of them soon cross paths once more. Faced by an implacable enemy from Lisbeth´s past who will stop at nothing to destroy her, she and Blomkvist must work together to save the life of Dr. Balder´s autistic son and stop his father´s research from falling into the wrong hands.

The plot is thoroughly enjoyable and perfect for a rainy day. Lagercrantz largely succeeds in doing the original Millennium trilogy justice. I did, however, feel that there was more to be wrung out of the story. Especially since I know that a sequel will be arriving in a smiling Amazon box before too long. Lagercrantz could easily have tied up all loose ends and made the book a hundred pages longer, as it stands now the avid reader will be left waiting for a sequel to see how it all ends. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The girl in the spider´s web, and catching up with Blomkvist and Salander.