Review of The Making of Donald Trump

Author: David Cay Johnston 
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

​This is a book more people should have read before November 8, 2016. Johnston is an investigative journalist who has been covering, among other things, Trump since the 1980s. In this brief but powerful book, he highlights the most relevant aspects of Trump's personality, tendencies, and dealings as they might apply to his tenure as president. Published months before the election, it should have served as a warning to the type of man (in personal interactions and in business) that was on the cusp of the presidency. 

In the decades Johnston has reported on Trump, some character traits are consistent--willingness to ally with questionable or outright criminal elements, narcissistic boasting, a pathological need for loyalty at any cost, a love of revenge, volatile emotions, a loose and sometimes absent relationship with the truth, deception about his education and wealth, crooked business and tax dealings, and unsettling views on women. 

In short, perfidy appears to overwhelm most parts of Trumps life, past and present. Would reading this book have changed people's minds? Maybe not; most of the revelations here are not new, they just have more heft because of their concentration and documentation. 

​My only quarrel with the book is at times it was repetitive and some of the chapter structures were hard to follow. But Johnston has the punchy and straight forward style that the best journalists employ to keep the reader interested without muddying his points. And his subject, while distasteful, is never boring.