The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President [Paperback]

The definitive family biography of President Donald Trump.

The revealing story of the Trumps mirrors America’s transformation from a land of striving immigrants to a world in which the aura of wealth alone can guarantee a fortune.The Trumpsbegins with a portrait of President Trump’s immigrant grandfather, who as a young man built hotels for miners in Alaska during the Klondike gold rush. His son, Fred, took advantage of the New Deal, using government subsidies and loopholes to construct hugely successful housing developments in the 1940s and 1950s. The profits from Fred’s enterprises paved the way for President Trump’s roller-coaster ride through the 1980s and 1990s into the new century.

With his talent for extravagant exaggeration—he calls it “truthful hyperbole”—President Trump turned the deal-making know-how of his forebears into an art form. By placing this much-publicized life within the context of family, Gwenda Blair adds a new dimension to the larger-than-life figure who ascended to the American Presidency.Robert GottliebThe New York ObserverConvincing and instructive...relentless in explaining and anatomizing Donald Trump's business dealings.Steve WeinbergThe Philadelphia EnquirerAs I read Gwenda Blair's biography, I found myself captivated by the three-generation saga of [the] family....A superb job.Cintra WilsonThe San Diego Union-TribuneEvenhanded and exhaustively researched, Blair's book will make any fair-minded soul wheeze with murderous nausea about the generally horrible behavior that made Trump a pink-marble-hewn-monster Priapus of the real-estate world and perhaps the most televized con artist of our time.Kirkus Reviews(starred) Blair reconstructs the history of the Trump family through prodigious amounts of research and personal interviews....The overall result has echoes of the best work of David Halberstam and Robert Caro.