Donald Trump is really busy right now trying to sell bibles to Iowans he clearly sees as rubes, so he paid a ghostwriter to knock out a quickie volume for him so he could make a few dollars. By all accounts, it’s thin gruel, more cheap, mediocre product from America’s leading vulgarian, which wouldn’t be such a damning descriptor if he wasn’t also racist, xenophobic, sexist, etc. 

In a Financial Times column, Edward Luce analyzes not just the Reality TV realtor’s book but also Michael D’Antonio’s title about him, Never Enough, a work he praises. An excerpt:

Donald first came to public attention in 1973, when the civil rights division of the US Justice Department launched a case against the Trumps for allegedly discriminating between black and white tenants in the public housing that he ran. Donald hired Roy Cohn, a notorious lawyer who had once worked for Joe McCarthy, the senator who spearheaded the “Red Scare” of the 1950s. It was a classic Trump response. If someone attacks you, hit back 10 times harder. If you are accused of something, label your accuser with something far worse. (It is a tactic he is putting to good use on the 2016 campaign trail.) Cohn hit the government with a $100m damages lawsuit claiming that federal officials were like “storm troopers” who had used “Gestapo-like tactics” to defame their client. The case was settled. Trump went on to win far bigger contracts. In Trump’s world, money is the measure of success. According to his own book, he has made “more than $10 billion”. According to Bloomberg, his net wealth is around $2.9bn.

D’Antonio aims to do more than explain the life of America’s best known property developer. He also links it to the unfolding story of Trump’s times. Trump was reared on the kind of self-help and get-rich-quick books that he now so frequently churns out himself (starting with The Art of the Deal, which came out in 1987, Trump has written more than a dozen). Raised on Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), the young Trump was taught that life was all about winning. His biggest influence was Norman Vincent Peale, a Presbyterian pastor whose book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) sold 2m copies in its first two years. Trump and his father regularly attended Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. Peale’s theology was devoid of sin or guilt. The only belief it commanded was in oneself. Confidence was the key. Prosperity would follow. “Learn to pray big prayers,” advised Peale. “God will rate you according to the size of your prayers.”•