Trump: The Art of the Deal

2,5 stars because Reading this was half interesting, half a real pain.

The good: The book concentrates on business decisions taken by Trump and why he has taken them. You can also follow the way his mind works when taking decisions. That was the point of the book.

The "a little bit annoying" part: Finally, you come to understand that the goals of his Deals are not important; what is important to him is the thrill of making deals. One example, he wants to buy a Holiday Inn, he doesnt know if this is an investment, or if he will resell it or demolish it. No goal or objective at all! Important was to make the deal... Maybe that is why some of his businesses went down. I didnt get the point of that. In general, I didn't agree with his way of making business but, that is his way and although a bit dumb, still interesting to read.

The bad: the book was cockyness 100% - I am the best for thinking this way... I am so great for doing this.... Nobody beats me... My worst fear is having bad partners... Ugh! Come on! At least, Mr Trump, your fears should be based on your own weaknesses but not on the weaknesses of others!
He was so conceited throughout the book that I couldn't really enjoy the parts that I found worth reading!

یک اتوبیگرافی از شرح زندگی و فعالیتهای تجاری ترامپ که خیلی کتاب مفیدی نیست

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

We like to read. We like to go the night before one of their book club meetings. We just... do a little reading, it’s called we do a little reading... Plus, we were getting ready to read the Art of the Deal. Frankly, we did read the Art of the Deal. This is a very big moment.

Published in 1987, Trump: The Art of the Deal, has nothing to do with politics (other than his vendetta against then-mayor Ed Koch, but even that seemed more personal than political), so I read it from the perspective of his reputation as a strong businessman, and not as president, since the former is what apparently qualified him to be the latter.

The book is part memoir, part business-advice. My review is reflective of how successful it was to those ends, and is not related to my personal opinions about his presidency (although someone will almost certainly try to accuse me of making this review political, since facts are no longer bipartisan).

First, as a memoir, it's pretty dull and uninformative. The book does not give much detail into his childhood or schooling, or even insight into the man himself. You won't learn anything you don't already know about him (he's competitive and vain) or his motivations. There's neither an inspiring rags-to-riches story nor a tale of overcoming some incredible obstacle to get where he is (No, committees and Ed Koch don't count). What it ends up being, instead, is Trump blathering on and on about scheming and bluffing his way to make big deals, while berating everyone else (including, but not limited to, contractors, city officials, major corporation owners, and other real estate developers) as less competent than him. He repeatedly claims his projects always finish ahead of schedule and under budget, while everyone else does shoddy work with multiple delays and go way over budget. Of course, Trump's saying that he regularly employs "truthful hyperbole" and "confirming an impression [people are] already predisposed to believe," makes it hard to trust his account of events, doesn't it? When he recounts, for example, how he kept costs down in Atlantic City by negotiating "very reasonable prices" with contractors "who had to either cover a certain overhead or go out of business," and construction workers who "were either out of work or about to be," my immediate thought was, "Reasonable according to whom?" 

He never directly acknowledges his inherited wealth, but he does have the gall to condescendingly refer to those in "the Lucky Sperm Club." While he does admit to there being a time (pre-1980) when "[he] had yet to build anything in New York, and no one really knew who [he] was" and he had to pester (my word, not his) his way into the "hottest" and "most exclusive" club, he conveniently neglects to mention falsifying his net worth in order to rank higher on the Forbes 400 in the early 80's (coincidentally at the same time he was trying to get some huge loans from banks...). His helping to rebuild the Wollman Ice Rink showed a more decent side of Trump, but it didn't make up for all of the exaggerating, boasting, and insulting that comprises the rest of the book.

There is no denying that Trump made some big deals in the early-to-mid 80's, but that accounted for only 6 years of his life, which hardly seems worthy of a memoir. Not only that, but it is a bit preemptive, isn't it? It is easy to make a deal look like a success if it's only been a couple years after the fact. Fast forward just a few years, however, and you find that Trump's plans for Television City ran into so many problems that he eventually sold control of the property to investors from China in 1994. Trump's Taj Mahal casino defaulted on interest payments to bondholders only six months after opening, and filed for bankruptcy in 1991. Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the Plaza Hotel, and Trump Castle Hotel and Casino all filed for bankruptcy in 1992, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in 2004, and Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2009. Part of the brilliance of Trump's deals were that he apparently convinced other people to front most of the money for him. Throughout the book, it felt like he spent most of his time securing tax exemptions and abatements; so he took big risks with mostly other people's money, and in many cases the massive profits his projects brought in were very short-lived. Maybe that makes him a "good" businessman, but it doesn't make him commendable, or in a position to give business advice, which brings us to the second category The Art of the Deal falls under.

Simply put, this book is rather useless as far as giving advice for any kind of businessperson. In chapter 2, he writes, "More than anything else, I think deal-making is an ability you're born with... mostly it's instincts... Moreover, most people who do have the instincts will never realize that they do." Trump repeatedly credits his gut for knowing what deals to pursue, which is not advice. When a self-help/how-to book says that the thing you bought the book to learn about cannot be taught, it doesn't have much value. However, when he does actually attempt to give something resembling advice, it is either:

1. too general ("more often than you'd think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.");
2. contradictory to other advice he gives elsewhere ("If you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big" vs. "If you go for a home run on every pitch, you're also going to strike out a lot");
3. not applicable for your average, non-millionaire entrepreneur ("when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, [and] pay them more than they were earning");
4. or nothing but some catchy-sounding slogan masquerading as advice ("One of the keys to thinking big is total focus.")

As another example of his contradictory advice, Trump scoffs in chapter 2 that only "people who don't know what they're talking about" talk about the importance of "location, location, location." It should strike you as odd, then, when, time and time again, he talks about how great of locations the properties he buys are in. He regularly employs tactics that are not illegal, but unethical (or, at the very least, shady). By example, He encourages people to "play to people's fantasies" ("truthful hyperbole"), deceive the other party (exaggerate how much demand there is, or hire workers to make a site look more productive, for example), simply change the subject if asked "a tough question," take advantage of old or vague zoning laws, and straight-up be "outrageous" and "controversial" to get free press. Again, some might say this makes him "sharp," or "resourceful," but I just don't see why we reward and praise this kind of behavior (Oh, right: money.).

To be fair, there is some useful advice scattered in the book. Personally and regularly visiting work sites, having complete plans/drawings so contractors can't underbid and charge more as plans change later on, and making sure the location/product you want to sell is clean when showing to buyers; are all good points to keep in mind for those in real estate. He also warns, "Never sign a letter of intent," which I guess is good advice? Still, not all that applicable for the average person picking up this book.

One part that really bothered me was his anecdote about a project manager who Trump refers to as a "fabulous man" and "one of the greatest bullshit artists" in the same paragraph. Trump's own lawyer called him a con man, and Trump claims he would have fired him if he had ever caught him stealing, but then, after one of the girls who worked in the office informed him the man had stolen from the office's funeral fund (and Trump admits to believing the girl and not the man's denials) he wraps up the story with "Irving was a classic. He had problems, but he was a classic." Trump may say "Stealing is the worst," but what he really means is "Getting caught stealing is the worst," which, again, really makes me lose respect for any advice this guy is trying to give me.

But really, at the end of the day, Trump didn't "write"* the book as a memoir or to give advice; he is selling his brand, "SUCCESS," the whole time, just like he was doing to the banks and CEOs in the book. The point is for you to believe he is successful, so you lend him money, buy his products, attend his "university," watch his TV show, vote for him, etc. etc., and the sad thing is, his pitch has been so convincing for the last 40 years that he really has become successful. While I didn't "dislike" reading the book, its unsatisfactory execution as both a memoir (I barely learned anything about his life story) and business-advice book (I barely learned anything about how to make successful deals) definitely warrants a one-star rating.


*Tony Schwartz, credited as the book's ghostwriter, claims Trump had almost nothing to do with the book, as Trump was “like a kindergartner who can’t sit still in a classroom" whenever Schwartz tried to interview him for the book. What's more, Schwartz, who spent eighteen months with him in order to get to know the man better, says a more appropriate title for the book would be The Sociopath, but of course you could argue that Schwartz is just jumping on the "mainstream media" "liberal" "fake news" bandwagon. You'd be wrong, of course, because two years before Trump asked him to write the book, Schwartz had written a piece about Trump unsuccessfully trying to evict rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants from a building he had purchased (an event that Trump's book recounts in a different light, of course. He insists that his idea to let homeless people squat in the empty apartments was intended as an act of philanthropy, not harassment, but is anyone gullible enough to believe him?).

"But if Schwartz had a history of being critical of Trump, why did Trump ask him to write a book about him?" you might ask. The answer shouldn't surprise you, of course: Trump loved how  "Everybody seem[ed] to have read [the article]." For Trump, as long as everyone is paying attention to you, you win. There may be many ways to gauge success, and while you could consider The Art of the Deal to be a success for selling over a million copies, remember that bank robberies and scams can be described as successes as well.

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.

Intended as an exercise in empathy and getting a grasp on the cultural climate, but this book is hardly enlightening on the Trump of 2025.

The art of the steal?

I don't think Trump is a monster. Sure I don't agree with most (if not all) of his policies, but I do know that there is a system behind what he's trying to do. I heard a lot about his persuasion techniques from Scott Adams, so I thought I'd give this book a read.

It's an ok book (a lot of it drones on into boring details on construction regulation in the 80's), and regardless of if you believe Trump wrote any of it, it still provides a deeper insight into how he thinks. The book does humanize him a bit and shows some of his positive qualities (like his love for New York), but once I had a look behind the mask the thing I realize I don't like about him is his narcissistic lack of empathy. For Trump a good deal is reward in and of itself, and it doesn't matter if the other guy got screwed, just so long as him and his team benefit. In the end it's all fair game, but I guess that's capitalism.