Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, and the Reinvention

The essential book to understanding Donald Trump as a businessman and leaderand how the biggest deal of his life went down. Now Barretts classic book is back in print for the first time in years and with an introduction about Trumps 2016 presidential campaign. Donald Trump claims that his success as a self-made businessman and real estate developer proves that he will make an effective president but this devastating investigative account by legendary reporter Wayne Barrett proves otherwise. Back in print for the first time in years Barretts seminal book reveals how Trump put together the biggest deal of his lifeTrump Towerthrough manipulation and deceit; how he worked with questionable characters from the mafia and city politics; and how it all nearly came crashing down. Here is a vivid and inglorious portrait of the man who wants now to be the most powerful man in the world. In Trump: The Greatest Show in the WorldThe Deals the Downfall the Reinvention Barrett unravels the myth and reveals the truth behind the moguls wheelings and dealings. After decades covering him few reporters know Trump as Barrett does. Instead of the canny businessman that Trump claims in his own books Barrett explores how Trump exploited his fathers banking and political connections to finance and grease his first major deals. Barretts investigative biography takes us from the days of Donalds lonely youth to his brash entry into the real estate market and to the back room deals behind his New York Atlantic City and Florida projects. Most compellingly Barrett paints an intimate portrait of Trump himself a man driven by bravado obsessive self-regard and an anxious ruthlessness to subdue his rivals and seduce anyone with the power to aid his empire. We see him head to head with an opponent as powerful as Pete Rozelle ingratiating himself with the brooding governor on the Hudson and fueling the Drexel engine driven by Michael Milken with hundreds of millions in feespaid ironically by gaming companies to fend off Trump takeovers. We explore his complicated emotional and business relationship with his first wife Ivana and the use he planned to make of his mistressand later his second wifeMarla Maples as a southern strategy in his then contemplated presidential campaign. With interviews with scores of adversaries and former colleagues we are given a privileged look at Trump the businessman in actionreckless as often as he is brilliant reliant on threats as much as on charm and ultimately a cautionary tale: is this the man we want to lead the world? PRAISE FOR TRUMP: Trump is a withering portrait of the most self-mythologized and promoted businessman of our era an exhaustively researched and long-overdue antidote to Trumps own books. It is a penetrating portrait of the age that spawned him and the many who aided and abetted his rise. Trump seems destined to be the definitive account of how Trump got ahead and why he fell. It is a sad story with important lessons for us all. James B. Stewart Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Den of Thieves Donald Trump surprises us again. Wayne Barretts Trump is a fresh detailed and vivid account of the tangled connections of money politics and power in our times. Nicholas Pileggi author of Wiseguy