A Very Stable Genius

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
A Very Stable Genius
Cover of A Very Stable Genius
Cover of first edition
Author <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Country USA
Language English
Subject Presidency of Donald Trump
Publisher Penguin Press
Publication date
 2020
Media type Hardcover
Pages 465
ISBN 9781984877499

A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America is a 2020 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig. The book presents an account of the first three years of the presidency of Donald Trump. It focuses on specific incidents of conflict with senior advisors, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

Background

The title refers to a phrase Trump has repeatedly used to describe himself, starting in January 2018 when a book, Fire and Fury, raised questions about his mental stability. Responding in a series of tweets, he said "Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart" and that his achievements in life qualified him as "not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!"[1] He continued to describe himself as "a very stable genius" on multiple subsequent occasions.[1][2][3]

Rucker and Leonnig have suggested that A Very Stable Genius is an effort to make sense of conflicting images of Donald Trump as "a success, a master in some ways, and also a chaotic, undisciplined, impulsive leader".[4] The book draws on more than 200 interviews with sources, who are not named in the book.[4][5]

Content

The book is organized around specific episodes of conflict within the Trump administration, under chapter titles that include "Unhinged", "Shocking the Conscience", and "Paranoia and Pandemonium". For example, the book highlights a July 2017 meeting at the Pentagon at which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, among other senior advisors and generals, attempted to brief the president on the current state and projection of military power, with Trump responding negatively to their approach and reportedly calling them "losers", "dopes", and "babies".[5] The book also highlights apparent gaps in the president's geopolitical knowledge, relating a story about a meeting with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in which the American president reportedly claimed that India and China do not share a border.[6]

Reception

Reviews of the book have been positive, with special praise for the detail of the authors' research. In The New York Times, Dwight Garner called the authors "meticulous journalists", noting that "this taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date."[5] Writing for The Guardian, Lloyd Green called the book "richly sourced and highly readable", and observed that it provided a contrasting, "unsettling" account in comparison to other "tell-all or third-party confessional" books.[7] In The Washington Post, Joe Klein noted that the book's uneven sourcing made some portrayals of key figures less convincing than expected, but generally praised the book for showing that Trump "has created his own ideology and his own party".[6]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=A_Very_Stable_Genius&oldid=726146097"