John Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir has been available for pre order for some time. Reviews are prominent.

I don’t plan to read it. Bolton has been accused of holding back for a money-making book what he should have shared during the impeachment hearings for President Trump.

Instead, I recommend A Very Stable Genius, Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig. Both are Pulitzer Prize winning journalists from The Washington Post and have extensive experience in covering American politics.

The book is detailed and frank, full of expletives and failed characters and a few courageous ones. Reading it during the Covid-19 lock down was not the most joyous activity I could have chosen. The insight I gained was worth the journey.

According to the book, Trump’s decision to plunge into a government shutdown just before Christmas in 2018 exemplifies the president’s style: Said one of his advisers: “It was done based on impulse and emotion and dogmatism and a visceral reaction rather than a strategic calculation. That’s indicative of a lot of the presidency and who he is.”

Another telling comment: “He was a president entirely unrestrained, free from the shackles of seasoned advisers who sought to teach him to put duty to country above self and to follow protocols. He concluded he was above the law . . .. He had grown so confident of his own power and cocksure that Republicans in Congress would have never dare break with him, that he thought he could do almost anything.”

That remark encapsulates the whole tragedy: American voters and politicians allowed Trump to believe he could copy the style of a dictator and do anything he wanted without restraint.