Fans pick 82 books like Trump

This book imagines a world where the United States succumbs to authoritarianism. Subsequent writers have explored this theme, but I love Lewis’s novel because it captures a precarious historical moment (the 1930s) that has a lot in common with the present day.

“Buzz” Winthrop, the politician turned dictator, whips up fears about threats to America, stressing the need to get back to the nation’s “true” values. It’s a chilling portrait of a nation that loses its way.

I was impressed by Tim Snyder’s ability to distill decades of academic knowledge of dictatorship and autocracy into very important but simple lessons that we need to pay attention to now and always.

An historian, Tim Snyder, is astute at identifying the legal ‘slides’ used by autocrats to gradually move democratic countries into non-democratic configurations. This is the kind of book I wish were in the required section of high school reading lists.

Jason Lutes spent decades creating this masterpiece—a graphic novel that brilliantly reconstructs life in Berlin in the years before Hitler became Chancellor. The characters are fully dimensional, a diverse and compelling collection of individuals, reeling from World War I, struggling to face the fall of Weimar and the cold hands of fascism tightening around their necks. This is a perfect melding of art, narrative, and political urgency that speaks eloquently to our perilous age.

Ben-Ghiat limns the traits that characterize authoritarians in modern times.

Drawing a line from Mussolini to Trump, the author guides readers in the authoritarian’s playbook, revealing how dictators corrode democratic norms and undermine institutional restraints on their power. This lucid, well-written history makes you think about dictatorship across time, cultures, and nations.

The author also reads this audiobook with professional polish making it a very pleasurable experience. Actually comforting as I would tune in often during the day doing the chores, with the iPhone in the back pocket. 

Maggie Haberman, currently a New York Times reporter with previous positions at the Post and Daily News, makes her account of the man “formidable” – to use a word from the New York Times review. But for me it was continually fascinating to hear the stories of Trump’s early years. For example, one of Haberman’s talking points is that Trump’s orientation to the world is one of hospitality, of course. This explains his charm to voters where I see none. 

It’s a long book, but I loved Haberman reading her story to me, as sad as it is, but as the saying goes, “knowledge is power,” and I feel stronger for knowing the human… show more.

I loved this book because it made me laugh…a lot!

Comedian Dave Barry wasn’t someone whose work I was that familiar with previously. I couldn’t put this book down despite the fact that it poked some fun at how to personal finance books like mine, which Barry clearly had read.

His quiz for assessing your current financial situation included questions like this:

How do you plan to finance your retirement?

1. Savings.

2. Social security.

3. Sale of kidneys.

This is another readable book—and it’s really important because these authors don’t just focus on the norms that Trump violated and that get so much attention, but actually offer an interesting analysis of the things he did administratively that weakened the office of the presidency and the national government. People tend to think Trump was a poor administrator, and in many ways, of course, he was, but his actions have consequences that we don’t always see and this book tells us about them.

We all know a psychopath – whether he or she lives next door, works with you, or is your spouse. No one says it better than psychologist Dr. Mary Trump. She describes her cousin, former President Trump, as a textbook psychopath with all of the behavioral, genetic, and environmental traits. His corruption, lack of empathy and conscience, shallow emotions, sexual promiscuity, and ruthlessness clearly shows his psychopathy. Former President Trump just doesn’t care. He’s not the only President that has psychopathic features but he’s the worst, aiming to destroy democracy and the Constitution for his own purpose. It’s a story we all know. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to see a psychopath in action, bolstered by money, power, and fame.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin was not only inside the Capitol on January 6 when it was stormed, he had just tragically buried his 25-year-old son the previous day. His book, a cathartic exercise for himself and a shocked nation, drills down to the heart of what happened, showing in graphic detail how violent and terrifying that day was from an insider’s perspective. 

As a former constitutional law professor at American University who later became a Trump impeachment manager and member of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the attack, Raskin eloquently explains the underlying events and issues that led to the violent breach. He argues forcefully why the former president himself must be held accountable before the country can begin a crucial, difficult healing process.

I like that this book dares to touch a raw nerve that is usually avoided in politically correct environments. This book is certainly polemical.

Basically, the claim is that North American pragmatic values have substituted classical intellectual European ones, contributing to the present-day degeneracy of science and culture and society in general, with special emphasis on the history of physics of the last century.

I think there are some truths among the ideas presented in this book. However, Unzicker’s hope is to “Make Physics Great Again,” mimicking the discourse of Donald Trump (replacing the word “America” with “Physics”), and I cannot see a future in which America or physics will be the same as they were in the past.