Trump: The Art of the Deal

Trump: The Art of the Deal, by Donald J. Trump and Tony Schwartz ★★★★
I received this autographed hardback copy before Donald was elected president, and read it in spurts after that. The book’s value is in giving one an insight into how Trump thinks.  The book was written in 1987, and starts with a review of one week in his life, ending with a follow-up of what became of the decisions of that week. The intervening chapters are a limited autobiography of the man, starting from childhood, through his schooling, and then summarizing his early big deals up to 1987. The details of his wheeling-dealing is not terribly interesting save for realizing a few things. 1. Seeing how Trump makes decisions. He always looks for people that he could trust, and who are the best in the business. His biggest admiration is for people of integrity. 2. Seeing how politics affects the most mundane things in life, and how Trump was able to use as well as was hindered by politics. 3. Seeing how bumbling so many other business executives were. There were many examples of very poor decision making, not just in government real estate projects, but also in private interest projects that should never have gone wrong, but did.
This book is of value to read in order to understand the way in which Trump makes decisions. He is neither conservative nor liberal. He is not Republican or Democrat, his religious leaning is toward Christian predominance, and he is not an extreme moralist (or immoralist–he neither smokes nor drinks). Donald is very much a pragmatist, that tends to set goals and hold to those goals. He is not an ideologue, though tends to have guiding principles. He is a great negotiator who is used to holding his cards close to himself, which might irk the ever-snooping main stream media and liberals. He has a strong tendency toward honest success, which we will probably see in the next four years.