Fire and Fury

Not as credible as one would like.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Probably not. When I began fact checking, I immediately found that the book exaggerated situations. While I am not a Trump fan, I don't want to be misled either. One example of misinformation is when the author discusses Trump's speech to the CIA. When I compared what the book reported to the entire speech on CNN, it was obvious that the book was editing out, and misrepresenting what was said.

Would you recommend Fire and Fury to your friends? Why or why not?

No, primarily because of the misrepresenting information. I prefer my journalism to be factual and allow me to make my own opinion.

Did Fire and Fury inspire you to do anything?

Be more diligent in fact checking.

Any additional comments?

Please leave the spin out of journalism, it's hard enough to get to the truth when people are being factual.

318 of 409 people found this review helpful

Difficult to differentiate real from fake info

the author basically starts off the books saying although he's done so much research and interviewed a lot of people He is uncertain what parts of the book are real and fake and sometimes he will let the audience know and other times he leaves it up to the audience to determine. This is a mistake and significantly reduces The credibility of the book. It would have been better if the author had used his research to make an educated guess on what was going on rather than adding conjecture. Increased ambiguity on such an important issue is disappointing. having said that the narrator is top-notch.

220 of 295 people found this review helpful

Entertaining Yet Lacks Credibility

This book would have been so much better if the author was able to eliminate his own bias. I am by no means a Trump supporter, but many points in this book are discredited or provably false with simple observation or common sense. According to this book, Trump is a stumbling, bumbling idiot, who accidentally became president. That is painfully untrue. Whether he is delusional or not, Trump believes he will be/is a great President and it has been his goal to become so for years. To claim otherwise takes so much credibility away from this book, which is sad. It is sad because there are, what I am sure are many moments of truth in this book, but it is deluded by its dishonesty.

135 of 195 people found this review helpful

A disappointment.

Most non-fiction comes in with hard facts & supports the initial premise as the book progresses. Sadly, a lot of hype prompted me to purchase this book. I kept yearning for something more substantive & less salacious.
<yawn>
This book was more commentary than investigative journalism. If you regularly keep informed about politics and policy, there is ZERO need to read/listen this book.

Anyone interested in good journalism should read “Dark Money!”

206 of 301 people found this review helpful

Genuinely Funny

Despite its flaws (you can tell the editing was rushed), the book is genuinely funny, especially as read by Holter Graham. Mr. Graham has the deft timing of a good stand-up comedian, inserting slight pauses just before delivering one of Wolff’s zingers.

Wolff may not be Bob Woodward but he is an accomplished writer—I feel certain he has studied and admires Hunter Thompson. His style has a light, flippant touch such that it doesn’t come across as mean but risible. As an example, he uses Mel Brooks’s The Producers as a metaphor for the Trump campaign: a cast of fools so inept that even they thought they could never be elected.

The comic relief is therapeutic. Rather than perceiving Trump as a bad dream, after reading Wolff’s book one views the Trump show as a four (or maybe two) year sitcom trying to run the USA.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Great Country that Allows such a Book

This was a very fun read. It is completely one sided and almost exclusively sourced by Steve Bannon but was nevertheless quite interesting. The book moves very fast and it is like living the last year in presidential politics in a few hours (so brace yourself). This book provided substantially more information about Bannon then the Trumps. The book makes a few things clear.

The actual legal danger to Trump is not Russian collusion but Russian money laundering and cover-up.
Bannon believes the campaign was too disorganized and inexperienced to effectively collude but the Kushners and Trumps may have been engaged in Russian money laundering long before the campaign.

Bannon is clearly a white nationalist but is a pretty smart and focused guy.

I was pretty well read about the Trump presidency before reading this book so there was not a lot of surprises, but it was not clear to me if Bannon was actually bright or not. This book sure makes him seem smart. His quotes seem brutally honest and consistent from his point of view.

This is a one sided hatchet job sourced largely by a disgruntled fired white nationalist employee, but multiple one sided hatchet jobs are very useful in understanding the full picture and this is a quite enjoyable read.

The narration was excellent with great clarity and energy which made the listen a pleasure.

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

The power of marketing

If your news sources includes the WSJ, NYT and Washington Post, then you pretty much already have read much of what is written in this book. No doubt there is some exaggeration, but all in all, this book is a yawner. Had there not been so much political noise about this book, many people (myself included) would never have bought it. All in all, it was not very good.

44 of 66 people found this review helpful

Colorful but stretches the actual quotes a bit far

The good: this is well-paced, and traces the events and personalities well. Some historical context and analysis is offered, such as practices of earlier presidents, compared to Trump's. These passages are well-crafted. Some of the rightist figures I found surprisingly interesting, such as Bannon and Ailes. The depictions here go beyond the two-dimensional cutouts offered in much popular press. The narration is superb. The book overall is a nice recap and update to the conversation. Keeping a fair distance from every last assertion this author makes, I do feel I am better educated on the history and players, having listened through this. Some of the fly-on-the-wall feel of being there came through well, though not all.
The bad: there is too much of a disembodied, unattributed, omniscient straw-person voice floating around explaining everything in the standard blue way, if a colorful and cleverly-phrased version of it. There are stretches where actual quotes would be more welcome (as small a sample as each might be anyway, to use the statisticians' term). The author's opening disclaimer too casually tries to dispel this deficiency. A bit more caution and care in the journalism would suit me.
Finally, I applaud this release as flushing out Trump, brandishing his lawyers' threats and his nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements. It it is high time his straddling the public-private line and getting a free ride attempting to privatize the truth was tested in the courts. Not that I think he will follow through. His track record in such fights has been severely patchy as it is. Yet, he plunges forward, unable to resist rising to the bait. Ha!

137 of 211 people found this review helpful

Hurry up, Mueller. Please, hurry up.

My favorite comment I’ve read so far comes from another reviewer: “Reading this book is like being forced to eat an entire 5 gallon carton of ice cream.” This book add important perspective to the debased, insane world of Donald Trump and the pathetic people who choose to be in his orbit. The sad joke of it all is that Mr. Trump was elected by less than 30% of the population and has the tools to put his lack of intellectual ability, declining faculties, perverse penchant for conspiracy theories, and ceaseless appetite for self-indulgence and gratification to damage our national interests for generations to come. So my plea upon finishing this book on the day of its publication is this: Hurry up, Mueller!

203 of 318 people found this review helpful

Everything we already knew, but in high-def detail

What made the experience of listening to Fire and Fury the most enjoyable?

It's the curtain-opening moment showing in great detail that the emperor not only has no clothes, but barely even understand he is emperor.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Fire and Fury?

The McDonalds Revelation

What about Michael Wolff and Holter Graham ’s performance did you like?

Wolff has recorded these conversations, so you can hear the distinctly Trumpesque or "Bannon-ese" nature of all quotes in the book.

Any additional comments?

It reads like fan fiction about the White House, which is great fun at first, but then you remember "this all actually happened", and it's a bit terrifying. We now have a clear, referenced exposé of how this so-called "draining the swamp" ironically consisted of dumping 1000s of tons of toxic waste right back in, then letting it sit stagnant because the Command-in-Chief doesn't even want to be there in the first place.

208 of 327 people found this review helpful