Unbelievable

Fascinating and quick read about the life of a campaign reporter - interesting enough on its own, but even more so when the campaign being covered is the Trump campaign and the author was the first one on the trail and came in for a lot of harassment and threats, both from the candidate and from his supporters. This isn't a book about the politics or policy of the 2016 election, but more about being there while what everyone had thought was ludicrous and unthinkable actually happens. I wish it'd gone a little more in-depth, but this was still really interesting and a perspective I haven't seen before.

This was my pick for the “song lyrics in the title” prompt for the PopSugar 2018 Reading Challenge. I feel a little like “Unbelievable” is a bit of a cop-out for the prompt, but it was already on my to be read list, and it works. And the book is fantastic.

This is the story of Katy Tur's time on the campaign trail as one of the journalists covering Donald Trump's campaign. It is, as she says, unbelievable. When it begins, she thinks it will be very short - as most of the American public thought. No one thought Trump would wind up being the Republican nominee. But as she attends rallies, and watches the vitriol of his supporters - which occasionally gets turned on her, as a member of the “lying, fake media,” she begins to realize he could, in fact, win this thing.

We experience Tur's shock as he calls her out by name multiple times, leading to death threats by Trump supporters, and security being assigned to her specifically. Through all of this, Tur continues to do her job as a journalist, reporting on the travel, the rallies, the information from sources within the campaign as they criss-cross the country and promise ridiculous things.

I was worried at first that the book would be a dry rehash of the events, but it is far from it. Tur speaks with a refreshing, absorbing voice. Even knowing the outcome - that Trump is elected president - it's a page-turner that didn't let me go until the last page. Unbelievable is a fast-paced, fascinating book by a first-class journalist.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Reading Challenge category: a political book

Reading this book was a little like looking through a pile of photos from a trip you were on, only the photos were taken by someone else. There are some parts you remember, some parts you saw from a different angle, and some parts that you have no memory of.

I found this book to be oddly disjointed with no clear throughline. It was difficult to tell why the author included the anecdotes she did. While I found a few of the stories interesting, there weren't enough of those moments to make the book worth it for me.

I don't watch cable or network news, and I do wonder if I would feel differently about this book if I was more acquainted with the author's journalism.

This was a very quick read and a look inside the Trump campaign by the NBC reporter assigned to cover it. Nothing that happened to her was surprising, not by societal norms but rather by the norms of our current president. No one should have to put up with that, much less from someone running for the highest office in our country. I'm glad she wrote the book though, so that we will have one more thing to help us look back with clarity. As she says in the book “Human beings have an edit button in their heads, an amnesia switch that none of us consciously controls”. She also tries to shine a light on the voters that voted for him and the fact that they were not given perhaps the attention that was required by the rest of us. They were looking for answers and Trump was willing to give them some.

It was an odd experience reading this book in the days leading up to the 2018 Midterms. My biggest takeaway is that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Katy Tur does an excellent job weaving the personal and the political and painting a vivid picture of a moment in time that will live on in our collective history. Definitely worth the read.

I???m never going on vacation. I???m never seeing my friends. I???m never getting my bed back. My brutal, crazy, exasperating year with Trump is going to end???by not ending at all. Trump will be president. The most powerful person in the world. And I will be locked in a press pen for the rest of my life. Does anyone really believe he???ll respect term limits? I have a vision of myself at sixty, Trump at a hundred, in some midwestern convention hall. The children of his 2016 supporters are spitting on me, and he is calling my name: ???She???s back there, Little Katy! She???s back there.???

The above was my first laugh-out-loud moment, imagining her reaction to the possibility that her brutal time on the campaign trail would never end, and that she would forever be called out by a man with no qualms about endangering or seeking to bully her. It was a laugh based on great sympathy.

Katy Tur is a very engaging writer, with a ton of heart, and no lack of guts. This book is something only a small group of people could write, and Katy was there from the beginning covering a campaign and a candidate like no other.

The crowd in New Hampshire is frothing as Pence talks about Clinton. He???s got a microphone, but in the middle of his speech another message cuts in, a maniac with a buzz saw of a voice, screaming out from the crowd. He???s close enough to the press pen for me to hear but far enough from Pence that the God-fearing running mate keeps on talking as if nothing were happening. I don???t know if Pence even hears this other man. Probably not. But I do, and I will never unhear him: not the man???s message, and not the thousands of other voices that summarized 2016 by not shouting him down.

???Assassinate that bitch,??? the man said.

And the crowd said nothing.

???Assassinate that bitch.???

And the crowd cheered on.