I read it and it was not my cup of tea. I couldn't get into it. I realized I had no interest in this book about halfway through and finished it as quickly as possible. There was nothing I liked or disliked. I've never felt this way about a book...

I'm going to stick to other figures like Napoleon, Marcus Aurelius, Joseph Stalin, etc.

Sorry President Trump, I'll still vote for you.

While Trump claims to have substantially written this book and I'm sympathetic to the idea that his co-writer might simply be lying to attract media attention, I think I ultimately believe Tony Schwartz' claim that he wrote this book single-handedly from shadowing Trump and studying interviews, as the book often defects from a plausible imitation of Trump to a more sober, neutral tone. In any event, I think this book is fundamentally the type of book Trump would write if he were inclined to do so, as it is almost entirely a summary of all the little nuances of his business dealings, and even today in interviews Trump seems mostly interested in reciting the finesses and negotiations native to institutional operations. Besides an amusing narrative description of a random week in Trump's life and a brief manifesto entitled "the elements of the deal", most of this book is a biography of the various business deals that Trump made during the course of his career (at least up until 1987). The idea of reading this was funny to me but I expected to drop it after about 20 pages (and nearly did so), but in a way this book is an interesting gestalt of the pre-reality TV, pre-political image of Trump who had achieved fame in the first place, something difficult to find now that almost all discussion of him is constructed effectively as post-truth agitprop. As I understand it, much of the actual narrative of the business dealings here is disingenuous and elides over the contribution of allies and embarassing losses but, even so, contains a plethora of historical information about the way US business and business law functioned during the 70s and 80s, and you can learn a lot about the way zoning laws, rent control, and other interesting topics to those who follow the news.

Ultimately, though, I can't help but feel that Trump's style of egotistical, elongated, and almost fugal ranting would lend itself exceptionally well to the literary form (and this book, while an OK attempt at imitating the Trumpian voice, doesn't really capture that) and that someday he might be able to produce or dictate a manifesto of sublimely written (if perhaps imperfectly argumentative) prose.

“And if it can’t be fun, what’s the point?”

The Art of the Deal covers Trump's childhood in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Proceeding to detail Trump's early work in Brooklyn prior to moving to Manhattan, whereupon he engaged in building The Trump Organization. It then describes his actions and thoughts while he was developing the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower, renovating Wollman Rink, and regarding various other projects.

The Art of the Deal also contains an 11-step formula for business success, inspired by Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. Trump's steps are:
*Think big
*Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself
*Maximize your options
*Know your market
*Use your leverage
*Enhance your location
*Get the word out
*Fight back
*Deliver the goods
*Contain the costs
*Have fun

The book shows Donald Trump's big personality and confident ego, portrayed as a rather charming and charismatic business figure. Trump reminds us he is always making big deals, handling lots of calls and knows how to engage with potential partners/companies.
The Art of the Deal highlights his early rise to success in his eyes and was published in November 1987 by Random House. It definitely hasn't lost any of its flamboyancy and potency as Trump outlines his personal recipe for success and how he does what he does.
Some would say Trump is a shrewd and clever businessman, while others would say he is a comedic, crafty con-artist: I would say Trump has a few elements from both of these. He clearly exhibits a passion and drive for what he loves doing, which at the heart of it is making money without being submissive. Quite literally taking the bull by the horns and giving no quarter.

Overall, The Art of the Deal, (I've read conflicting accounts that Trump may have had a ghost writer or in simpler terms someone wrote it for him... Whatever the truth it is a highly entertaining and interesting journey with some sound advice.) is a very funny and brave book from Trump. Definitely a case for egoism, that larger than life personality, being key to possibly if not through intimidation but by analysing those you're dealing with: Trump does this and enjoys getting inside the psychology, inside the head of whomever he deals with. I think Publishers Weekly partly summed it up when they called the book a "boastful, boyishly disarming, thoroughly engaging personal history".
Also Trump seems to be an expert (How they work and think for example...) on China and the Chinese: “I've read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”
Trump likes to think that nobody does it better than him, I keep being reminded of "words... Nobody does words like me." from his public speeches and I would say that he has a way of doing things that often leads people to say he either has a big head or borders on the delusional margins.
Having said all that The Art of the Deal is a very fun and positive journey from the early days in business and his personal life, which was a pleasure to read. Trump often makes many of us smile or laugh (Or for opponents/critics more negative reactions...) when it comes to politics or business spheres.

“The most important thing in life is to love what you’re doing, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it.”

A few days ago I come across this story about how the author, Robert Caro, was among the prominent NYC West Side residents that fought the construction of something called Television City that Donald Trump wanted to build on the Hudson River in the late 1980s. The complex would have included new TV studios for NBC as well as the largest skyscraper in the world. Not only had I never heard of this project, I had in the last few years read Caro’s classic biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. It occurred to me that Donald Trump ascension was almost immediately after Moses’s demise and although Moses was a city planner and Trump a developer there was some personality overlap that I bet bothered Caro. These were guys that willed things into existence because they wanted what they wanted, consequences be damned. With all of that in mind I picked Trump: Art of the Deal to see what happened.

I had vaguely known that Trump’s father developed outer borough properties and Donald chose Manhattan to make his own mark in the world. He even mentions at some point that sons of great men often reject their father’s business as too hard to live up to. He says this somewhere in the middle of the book, but I got the feeling that his accomplishments and failures have been a response to that challenge to live up to Fred Trump. You get no hint of rivalry. What you get is a son who wants to be so good his hard-scrabble father will have to acknowledge it. At the heart of his father’s influence is a blue-collar sensibility embodied as a pro-business New York Democrat. Trump is not very political in the book. He will praise Mario Cuomo. He finds Jimmy Carter inept and Ronald Reagan suspect. The mayor of New York, Ed Koch, is his major nemesis in the city, less for ideology and more publicity and ego. His ideology is trying to accomplish things other people scoff at.

Later on Trump will overextend and failed deals and bankruptcies will be the story. Here though is the First Act of his life where the towers go up and the future looks very bright. Boy Gets Girl. The girl he chases and wins is Trump Tower although several other projects are detailed. That Television City project will play out in another book when he loses the biggest deal he ever envisioned. I suppose Act Three is the Apprentice and the turbulent presidency which either ends in tragedy or triumph depending on how things play out. No stage play could be bettered structured.

I think the legacy of this book and the celebrity it brought gave him a different product to market, namely himself, and that was the foundation of his personal comeback.

Things I learned and surmised:

-Trump’s general worldview was fully formed by the 1980s when this book was written. He didn’t like how our trade deals favored the Japanese so therefore his opposition to the TPP back in 2016 wasn’t a new idea for him.

- He takes a swing at Reagan’s arms build-up and military spending suggesting that his Ron Paul / Dennis Kucinich approach to foreign policy is not new either. His demands that NATO pay their fair share is consistent with his 1980s worldview. He treats that alliance like a deal he will walk away from if the terms stop favoring the USA.

- His flirtations with the Clintons a decade ago seem to be his desire to find the old kind of Democrat he feels most comfortable around. After the election of Obama, further globalism soured him on most Democrats and Republicans in office. But he understood as Bloomberg recently found out, that no billionaire will win the Democrat nomination in the Occupy Wall Street era so he ran as a Republican.

- I predict after he leaves office he’ll likely be a vocal opponent of the next Republican president unless it’s Mike Pence or a globalism skeptic. I think the Democrats that want to impeach him now will find his criticism of Republicans very quotable and all the Hitler memes will fade from memory.

- I guess if the Television City deal worked, he wouldn't have been president at all and thus he wouldn't have had the opportunity to call his biggest tenant, Fake News.

In Episode 15 - The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump & Tony Schwartz,the Terrible Book Club returns after a year and a half long hiatus!

Chris wakes from his coma into a world of unprecedented horror.

America's favorite, number-one con man expounds on how great he is. And, how easy it is to fool people.

It is no overstatement to call this book America's premier political tract of the 21st century; It embodies the heart of darkness that is the "fuck everybody but me" mentality carefully groomed into the populace by the Right-Wing machine and which drives today's rejection-of-the-commonweal politics. Trump one-ups Machiavelli.

It is truly the Bible of Fox News/Ayn Randian culture. And just because Trump is callow doesn't mean he's not honest. He tells you outright that he's out to screw you. But in America there is something ingrained in the citizenry that equates this kind of openly ballsy mercenary behavior with goodness, quality and substance. Moxie as an inherent good. The simple appeal of the loud strong man. Action over the cerebral. Thoughtfulness? Constitutional muster? Historical lessons? Screw all of that. Leave that shit to liberal philosophy professors. Trump voters love a con man. They would, of course, hate him if they'd found he'd hacked into their bank accounts directly and taken all their money. But they'll love him when he takes their money by perpetuating the present corporate mercenary system. Because they will be too stupid to know they've been robbed when it happens through the back door. Putting two and two together equals some number they can't quite calculate.

Let's give Trump credit for being the first politician to openly reveal the long-unstated view that the Republican Party has of its fact-challenged base: "I love the poorly educated."

There are some alternate titles for this book that would be just a valid:
* The Art of the Con, or
* The Art of Being an Asshole, or
* The Art of the Deal for People Who Have Millions of Dollars to Play Around With From the Get-Go, or
* The Art of How to Bully People, Exploit a Corrupt System, and Make a Bundle While Producing Nothing of Value in the Process.

Opening of the book, with my modest amendments:
"To my parents, Fred and Mary Trump..." who gave me millions of dollars the rest of you don't have, to pull myself up by my bootstraps with...

"I owe special thanks to several people...Ivana Trump, my wonderful wife..." who I will soon divorce when her trophy value has declined...

"And, [to] my three children..." whom I would bed in a heartbeat if they weren't my daughters, because, hey, they're hot; let's get real, people. But not the son, because, c'mon I ain't no homo.

Luckily, the Donald deigned to make time to share these kernels of wisdom with us, because, as he makes it known repeatedly, he is a very busy man, and thus hardly able to spend time on a book. We are to infer our privilege from this, and should be grateful that Trump dictated this to his ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz. And that's what this feels like: a piece of dictation. Trump could have talked into a tape recorder and had a transcriber write the book. Maybe that's close to how this actually happened. The book feels very much like a Donald Trump political speech: Full of braggadocio, flippant false sincerity, shallow statements lacking detail or justification, pandering provocative fear-mongering insults that trigger lizard-brain endorphins, and rambling jumps from one unrelated thing to another.

This is more or less the narrative of this book: "I got a call from *insert name of famous or powerful person* about *insert pending business deal* and I told *famous or powerful person* to: *(A: get back to my lawyer on it, or B.) I look forward to doing business on this, or C.) I'm gonna sue your ass*."

Valuable things I learned:
* I'm a winner.
* "I make deals, that's how I get my kicks." (at least he starts off honestly)
*If I weasel my way into an organization, people will pay to get rid of me.
*I will threaten you with lawsuits, even criminal ones that don't really apply, if you try to take actions I don't like. That always makes 'em nervous.
*I file a lot of lawsuits, and win them (except the ones I lose or withdraw, which I don't mention in this book).
*If your name is Donald Trump, everyone wants to sue you.
*It pays to sometimes be a little wild, and a bully.
*I'm a populist hero who helps little old ladies keep their farms against big bad cold-hearted foreclosing bankers (except when I do the same thing, which I have, but don't mention in this book).
*I use the word "ridiculous" a lot, as shorthand and in lieu of actually explaining my justifications.
*I know a lot of celebrities and business leaders who do me favors and give me free stuff. They're all very nice guys.
*Other people who are pompous... I don't like them so much.
*I'm such a micromanager that I even get involved in the Christmas decorations that are hung in Trump Tower. I hate all of the decorating options except for one really huge gold wreath because, as I say, "Less is more." [seriously]
*My son has my genes, because he won't take no for an answer. (But hey, neither do rapists. OK, I just threw that in for fun.)
*I love people who tell me things in 20 seconds because they don't waste my time.
*When I don't have a real answer, have no substance or no progress to report on a project I'll just call a press conference and (and I quote): "What the hell...I'll wing it and things will work out." [in other words, this will be the template for my future political speeches...and the dummies won't know the difference].

This gets three stars for unintentional laughs. If I were the Donald I would use some of my cash to get better hair, and then I would review my book thusly:

"Let me tell ya, folks, it's a mess."

(KevinR@Ky 2016)

The greatest, most incredible book I've ever read.

You will find hints of just about everything you see in Trump now in this book. Too bad people mostly did not read it at all, read it closely or heed its warnings.

If you read this book hoping to find the secret formula to become a rich real estate mogul, you will likely be disappointed. Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump does present many examples of successful as well as failed deals he had put together and you can always glean ideas by studying why and how someone had accomplished something. But that was something that worked at that time with all of the circumstances as they were then. It may not be repeatable under any circumstances you will encounter. What may be helpful from this book is seeing the character and principles that are Donald Trump. Like him or not, he does explain certain personal rules he tends to follow. Some of these may be applied, even on a much smaller scale, in buying rental properties and businesses. The core of what Art of the Deal is about is that, for Donald Trump, making deals is basically a game; and the more complex it is, the more he sees it as a challenge. We have a few rental properties that we bought, repaired, and now rent out, all without reading this book. It does offer some higher level ways to look at potential deals and may expose you to some general strategies to use for your own deals...

This was a very enjoyable read (or listen). Hearing about the way Trump thinks and the risks he was willing to take was kind of inspiring, actually. The writing was very much in his style of speaking, which (however you feel about him personally or politically) is highly entertaining to me. The Audible narrator did an exceptional job of capturing Trump’s unique personality without being a cheesy caricature.
Highly recommend.

if you ask, you just might get it

"Next book from @realDonaldTrump: Art of the Fail #Trumpcare"
Tweet by Senator Mazie Hirono

An Ethicist Reads The Art of the Deal
in:https://www.theatlantic.com/business/...