Book Review: “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America”

The new book from two reporters for the Washington Post reveals why history is so important in the Trump era

When I heard that there was yet another book about the Trump presidency coming out, I had to think long and hard about whether I wanted to read it. I’d already read so many exposés and investigative reports of this administration — from serious works of journalism such as Bob Woodward’s Fear to Michael Wolf’s Fire and Fury and its seedy sequel — that I was beginning to feel a bit fatigued by the whole thing. Did I really need to read more about how awful Trump was, I wondered? So, as all good readers do, I went to Goodreads, to see what others were saying.

While I was perusing the reviews, one in particular stood out to me. The reviewer noted that what they valued about this particular book was that it reminded them of just how much of the craziness of the Trump administration they’d managed to forget as the years have gone by. Indeed. Think about just how much has happened since Trump was inaugurated in 2017: there was the lying about the size of his inauguration crowd, his both-sides-ism regarding Charlottesville; the horrendous attrition rate as those who were seen as the “adults in the room” fled the…