Here are 81 books that Trump fans have personally recommended if you like
Trump.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I have studied nineteenth-century American literature and culture for more than thirty years. My friends roll their eyes when I excitedly share a passage from Charles Chesnutt, Henry James, Herman Melville, or Kate Chopin. I wrote this book because I realized that nineteenth-century thinkers and writers have a lot to teach us about tyranny, particularly the dangers it presents to our nation. I hope you’ll find the challenge of these books as important as I do!
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.
“The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal.”—Salon
It Can’t Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis’s later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.
Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press.
I have been a professor of politics and law for decades, first at Harvard and then Oxford, and so on; I spent these decades trying to understand what makes democracy work. I think we’ve been focusing on the wrong things, and as a political and legal theorist, I want to help us think about a better way forward—one we can carve for ourselves every day of our lives.
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.
'A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close' Rachel Maddow
'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer
History does not repeat, but it does instruct.
In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised…
I’m President of the Writers Guild Initiative, with a mission of giving a voice to populations not being heard (LGBT asylum seekers, exonerated death row prisoners, Dreamers, etc.). In our writing workshops I see how marginalized communities are deprived of their rights and how insidiously minority rule is seizing power. Fascism depends on demonizing the Other, which was weaponized during the Trump years and is exploding on the right. This issue animates my life and work as a writer, mentor, speaker, and teacher. In the USA, democracy is hanging by a thread. My book takes a deep dive into what this means for an American family over the next fifteen years.
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.
Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the comics medium. For twenty years, Jason Lutes toiled on this intimate, sweeping epic before the collected Berlin was published in 2018 to widespread acclaim, including rave reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Vulture, Washington Post, and many other outlets. Lutes s historical fiction about the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism is seen through the eyes of the Jews and the Nazis; the socialists and the socialites; the lavishly decorated queer clubs and the crumbling tenement apartments. Marthe Muller is an aspiring artist…
I am a historian and a professor of political management at George Washington University, and I became interested in the John Birch Society when I encountered the group while writing my first book, on Ronald Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign. I'm also fascinated by debates about political extremism in modern America including such questions as: how does the culture define extremism in a given moment? How does the meaning of extremism shift over time? And how do extremists sometimes become mainstream within the context of American politics? These were some of the puzzles that motivated me to write Birchers.
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.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin-enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future.
For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and…
Warner is a multi-disciplinary artist who began with object theatre – writing, designing and building characters, and performing. Now, history writing is his primary focus, having written two books for 14 years, and still counting, writes a monthly blog, combining words and images to tell stories of early Snohomish.
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…
“Will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.” - Joe Klein, The New York Times
"A uniquely illuminating portrait." - Sean Wilentz, The Washington Post
“[A] monumental look at Donald Trump and his presidency.” — David Shribman, Los Angeles Times
From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump's presidency like no other journalist, Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his…
Apart from my professional expertise as a philosopher, I have directly observed science by working as a professional researcher in Physics and Astronomy. In any field, either arts, science, humanities, literature,... I observe the same thing: decline, ugliness, lack of spirit, lack of great intellectual achievements, and stupidity. Of course, we have technology, medicine, engineering, the Internet, and material things… and they are better than ever, but our culture and spirit are dying. Science is part of this culture, which is also in decadence, and working as a scientist and reading Spengler is a good combination to realize it.
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.
When I was growing up, I saw family members and friends, who were otherwise smart people who could master other aspects of their lives, have difficulty with personal finance decisions and investing. When my dad was laid off during a recession, he had some retirement money distributed to him, and I got interested in investing as he researched and tried with difficulty to handle this money himself. In my young adult years, I was a sponge to learn as much as I could about personal finance.
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:
Did you ever wish that you really understood money? Well, Dave Barry wishes that he did, too. But that hasn't stopped him from writing a book about how to understand money. In it, Dave explores (as only he can) such topics as:
How the U.S. economy works, including the often-overlooked role of Adam Sandler.
Why it is not a good idea to use squirrels for money.
Strategies that will give you the confidence you need to try for a good job, even though you are, let's be honest, a no-talent loser.
Why corporate executives, simply by walking into their offices,…
I was born in Washington, D.C., in a hospital not far from the U.S. Capitol. I remember being awestruck walking through its halls on tours as a kid. As a journalist, I covered some hearings and interviewed Congress representatives and staff there. The attack on January 6, 2021, was more than a breach of a landmark, historic building representing the top legislative body in the country; it was an assault on the fabric of democracy itself. A tragic crime occurred there that left several people dead and many injured, both physically and emotionally. We must hold everyone involved, especially those at the top who planned this invasion, accountable for what occurred that day.
This book by two Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters contains even more behind-the-scenes looks than most at what happened during Donald Trump’s last year in the White House. Leonnig, a national investigative reporter, and Rucker, senior Washington correspondent, details nuggets such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham telling Trump a couple of days before January 6 that Pence couldn’t change the result and pointing out how Al Gore hadn’t tried doing that when he actually won the popular vote - but lost the Electoral College - in 2000. Trump replied that Gore wasn’t smart enough to pull such a move.
The authors journeyed to Mar-a-Lago a few months after the Capitol attack for a surreal interview with the former president. That alone is worth the read.
The instant #1 New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of 2021
The definitive behind-the-scenes story of Trump's final year in office, by Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters and authors of A Very Stable Genius.
“Chilling.” – Anderson Cooper “Jaw-dropping.” – John Berman “Shocking.” – John Heilemann “Explosive.” – Hallie Jackson “Blockbuster new reporting.” – Nicolle Wallace “Bracing new revelations.” – Brian Williams “Bombshell reporting.” – David Muir
The true story of what took place in Donald Trump’s White House during a disastrous 2020 has never before…
I’m a family therapist and author with a lot of experience in psychopathic behavior. Psychopathy falls on a spectrum – from a few traits to the extreme (serial killer) and everything in-between. Studies have shown that strong psychopathic behavior is common in our leaders – political, religious, business, and cultural. There’s also the psychopath “next door” – people we work, play, and live with. As an author, therapist, and researcher, I’m passionate about the subject – constantly examining psychopathic behaviors. I hope you enjoy my Broken Books Series which features different types of psychopaths in both the present and past, and my booklist that explores this fascinating subject.
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.
* THE INTERNATIONAL AND SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER * In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who threatened the world's health, economic security and social fabric.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships…
I believe in democracy. I think the US has the opportunity to be the world’s first multicultural and inclusive democracy. And I think that’s a very, very hard thing to do. I’ve been writing about democracy through the lens of presidential history my whole career, and I think the US has done some things so impressively well while at the same time it frustratingly keeps failing to live up to its own ideals. The tensions and contradictions in our history as we try to expand and enact those ideas are endlessly fascinating. And I’m nervous that we may be seeing the end of a national commitment to democracy.
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.
"This is a book for everyone who has developed an unexpected nostalgia for political 'norms' during the Trump years . . . Other books on the Trump White House expertly detail the mayhem inside; this book builds on those works to detail its consequences." ―Carlos Lozada (one of twelve books to read "to understand what's going on")
"Perhaps the most penetrating book to have been written about Trump in office." ―Lawrence Douglas, The Times Literary Supplement
The definitive account of how Donald Trump has wielded the powers of the American presidency
The extraordinary authority of the U.S. presidency has no…
