Fear

Let's be honest, this book is basically gossip. You don't need the first hand accounts of administration lackeys to understand Trump and his government. This administration is fairly transparent about its xenophobic and economic priorities.

There's this point about 2/3rds through Woodward's book where you start to wonder if his key sources really get challenged for being part of the policies of the Trump administration. It never happens. It makes for a strange lack of accountability in a book that subscribes to “a great man” theory as the theme, but with Trump being a grand buffoon. Doesn't this make the story not Trump's lies and stupidity but rather the utter moral failure of the cabinet and hangers-on that enable his rule?

Maybe history will be kinder to Woodward's expose of the inner workings of the White House. To me, Fear seems like a cautionary tale in regards to how access journalism misses the real story of Trump's political fortunes: adjacency to power turned Woodward's sources into craven enablers, not “adults in the room.”