Mary L. TrumpCritiques

When I heard Mary Trump was writing a tell-all about Trump, I was both interested and wary; Do I really want to read an entire book about that horrible man? I continued to ask myself that question as I checked it out at the library, all the way to reading the foreword. Mary Trump’s writing is witty and sarcastic, and from the beginning she makes it obvious how she feels about her uncle. I’ve always had a fascination with psychology and neurology, and I think Mary did a great job of writing both a biographical history of the Trump family and an analysis of the dysfunction that made Donald Trump the way he is today.

In fact, dysfunction doesn’t feel like a strong enough word. The way Freddy Trump, Mary’s father and Donald’s brother, was treated by his family was horrible, and that cruelty extended to Mary and her brother. Money is the only thing that matters to the Trump family, and Fred Trump, their father, was just the sort of villain that would get a book rejected for being too cliché.

I realize that Mary Trump is the opposite of impartial when it comes to this subject, but her words rang true to me. The book is worth a read, but if you’d like to avoid feeling outrage and reading about emotional abuse, I’d skip it.

A book about the descendants of Fred Trump, especially the oldest son, Freddie, who was the heir apparent, tried to please his father, but never succeeded and about a younger son, Donald, who saw what happened to his older brother, and took a very different path, learning coping skills that precluded emotional attachment.

This is a description of dysfunctional relationship patterns that were perpetuated from generation to generation and how various family members were affected. It was written by a daughter of Freddie. She tells of the impact on her family financially and emotionally. There is not much about the emotional impact on herself.

Well written but no new information was offered. Mostly about Fred Sr and Jr (Jr being the authors father). The whole family should possibly have been institutionalized

First and foremost, this book is *NOT* a takedown of 45. It is *NOT* a cash-grab by an angry, estranged niece whose greed was stoked by envy.

It is the story of Fred Trump's family from the viewpoint of someone who, despite not being welcomed within it because her father needed to be himself, still was there inside the bunker until her father's death.

It is the memory of a person whose entire life was formed by bad parents, her own and theirs. It is the analytical conclusions of a trained psychologist whose degree is from a highly regarded school. It is also chilling, infuriating, and deeply, deeply saddening to read.

Freddy Trump never got a break; he died before his life developed meaning and long after he stopped caring about it. Fred, father of the Devil's Brood, was a tyrannical, withholding man without a shred of empathy or emotional capacity. Mary Anne Trump, illegal Scottish immigrant, was useless and indifferent as a mother or grandmother.

And there is no doubt that 45 was formed in this nuclear reactor to be exactly who he is. Mary Trump had a balcony seat to the process and tells us exactly what happened on the occasions she was present. This is not sensationalized or presented as a bid for pity. Dr. Trump made a concerted effort to tell us what happened *then* contextualize it on a psychological level.

I didn't want to read another hatchet job on 45. Of course I despise him. I don't need more fuel for that binfire. I do, however, need to have some context, some sense of *why* this catastrophe is unfolding. Dr. Mary Trump told me what I wanted to know.

The seeds of the present are always in the past.½

Insights into Donald Trump, how and why he became what he is and how he lives. A torrid family where the sociopathic father played his children off against one another and showed unfair favouritism towards Donald to the detriment of all including Donald. Written by his niece, daughter of the eldest son of Fred Trump, who significantly disappointed his father and died at the age of 42. And all Donald can do in response to her psychological analysis of him and his family is belittle her.

This was a very good book. It was very sad. This was not a book I'd have chosen for myself to read, but someone slipped it into my Little Free Library, and I found myself thumbing through it. It seemed interesting enough. I knew that the author and niece of Donald J. Trump was a clinical psychologist who was at odds with him. I thought this book would be about the psychological traits of our former president, but I was surprised to learn that it was the story of the Trump family with an emphasis on Fred Trump, father of Donald , Freddy (Mary's dad), and three other siblings. As I read the story of this toxic family, I began to piece together the story of why Mary was so angry with Donald. I felt a lot of compassion for Mary's father Freddy who had his own apspirations in life which were squelched by Fred in favor of Donald.

It wasn't until the last small chapter of the book that Mary gives a psychological profile of Donald. She hits it exactly. I don't wish to read anything else about Donald Trump, but this was definitely a worthwhile read. I wish Mary all the best.

The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma And Finding A Way To Heal (2021) by Mary L. Trump, Ph.D. Read this book. It is very important in understanding modern America and the problems we face. There is a great deal of our collective history discussed, mostly aimed at enlightening the modern reader of the failures created after the Civil War. Mary Trump is a psychologist, and using her particular insight via her lengthy training, she writes a review of the last 170 years with an eye as to how the failures of our government in the 1860s and onward lead to the great divide in America. If you doubt this, ask yourself why almost all military bases are named after Confederate generals. That is only a small concession President Jackson made to his fellow Southerners. The “Restoration” was a joke, the equality of Blacks in America a falsehood, and the treatment of every citizen is unjust due to the actions of our country’s leadership for the past 16 decades.
The trauma caused by inaction, actions that were unjust or, basically, unlawful, and the resultant “Trauma” in America is exposed here in a clinical manner. This book is short, not sweet at all, but totally to the point. It gives you a lot to think about. I found there were few ways given as to how to heal these great, staggering wrongs. I think it starts with the individual looking beyond devotion to political parties and into what is right and just. So if you truly want to make America great, start by being a good neighbor and doing the best for those around you, not just your own kind.

Disappointing. I didn't learn much more than what I already knew from reading the news and The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump." I recommend that book over this one.

If you want to know why Donald J. Trump is the way he is, his niece Mary, explains it all in TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH.

The daughter of Fred Trump’s oldest son, Freddy, and a clinical psychologist, Mary relates the family history from both personal and professional observations. It is an extraordinary case study of a very wealthy, dysfunctional family: Fred and Mary Trump and their five children: Maryanne, Elizabeth, Freddy, Donald, and Robert.
Friedrich Trump, the grandfather, became wealthy operating restaurants and brothels in British Columbia during the Gold Rush in the late 1800s. He died of the Spanish Flu. His son, Fred, at age 12, took over his role to help his mother and two siblings. He wanted to become an builder, a career choice that his mother supported.
Donald’s mother, Mary, became quite ill after the birth of Robert when Donald was 2 ½ years old. She survived, but wasn’t able to fully function after that. Two youngest boys had to figure out things on their own.
His father was married to his job. He put in long hours six days a week. When he was home, he was very dictatorial. He managed by correction, commenting primarily when someone did something he thought was wrong. Freddy, his oldest son, wanted to be a pilot. Fred considered that being “a bus driver” and Freddy entered the family business. He was given a title and criticism, but neither responsibility nor opportunity to learn.
Fred showed preference to whichever of his sons could be of the most use. Donald learned from watching and realized that he didn’t want to be like Freddy. At one point, his behavior led to him going to a boarding school because his behavior was so poor. Donald then joined the business and learned to act in ways that received his father’s approval. His father realized that Donald lacked many talents to be successful, but he was able to impress important people and that was extremely beneficial to the organization. (He was able to use his influence with Roy Cohn to get his sister Maryanne a federal judgeship.) Fred paid to get Donald out of a lot of problems.“ His cousin Mary noted,“He’ consistently failed up despite his glaring lack of fitness.”
Donald bragged that he was a self-made man despite his father’s huge financial support. When his cousin Mary asked. “What has he ever accomplished on his own?” his sister Maryanne responded, “He has had five bankruptcies.”
TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH was published in 2020. About Donald Trump and the condition of the US under the Trump administration, Mary wrote:

It was a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle could manage. Doing so would require courage, strength of character, deference to experts, and the confidence to take responsibility and to course correct after admitting mistakes. His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the midst of the tragedies we are currently facing. His egregious and arguably intentional mishandling of the current catastrophe d to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he’s never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding, personal protective equipment, and ventilators that your tax dollars have paid for from states whose governors don’t kiss his ass sufficiently.

TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH is an amazing analysis of why Donald Trump is the person he is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t explain why he has so many supporters.

This book makes some plausible arguments about the origins of Donald Trump's extremely odd personality. Mary Trump is one of the best-placed people on the planet to make these arguments.

However, there was a large blind spot regarding the behaviour of the rest of the Trump family, which I found distracting. When Fred Trump excludes Mary Trump's branch of the family from his will, she portrays it as a great injustice that the roughly $1 billion (largely ill-gotten) is to be split between four families instead of five. She complains about this for what felt like half an hour of the audiobook. She comes close to a realisation when she mocks other family members for feeling entitled to money they didn't earn, but she doesn't appear to have fully absorbed this idea.

100% inheritance tax, please.

Too Much and Never Enough is a study of the Trump family’s pathology, by insider Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece and a Ph.D. in psychology. It conveys important information about grandiose, vindictive, incompetent Donald (15), who, as president of the United States, “shredded norms, endangered alliances, and trod upon the vulnerable” (186).

Fred Trump, the patriarch of the family, was a “high-functioning sociopath” (24) who was callous, indifferent, controlling, rigid, sexist, and unable to empathize with children. His wife Anne McLeod Trump was an invalid and “the kind of mother who used her children to comfort herself rather than comforting them" (23). Donald, he second-youngest child In this oppressive, uncaring household, developed characteristic defenses: “be tough at all costs, lying is okay, admitting you’re wrong or apologizing is weakness” (43). When "Fred started paying attention to his loud and difficult second son, he came to value those traits” (27).

Mary’s main concern for much of the book is the suffering that Fred caused her father “Freddie." Fred’s pressure and disdain thwarted Freddie’s career as a pilot for TWA and led to his alcoholism and early death. A delayed consequence was that Mary and her brother Fritz were cut out of near-billionaire Fred’s will. They sued, but backed off when Fred’s surviving children threatened to cancel their family-provided health insurance—a dire threat because Fritz had a newborn son who needed round-the-clock care. Eighteen years later and more than a little troubled by Donald’s presidency, Mary violated the family’s silence about its finances, turning over thousands of documents from the lawsuit to New York Times reporter Susanne Craig, leader of the investigative team that produced the Times’ 14,000-word exposé of the Trump family’s “potentially fraudulent and criminal activities" (190), published on October 2, 2018.

A family tree early in the book would be helpful for tracking Trump relationships. The references to lawyers, reporters and other outsiders, as well as family members, would be clearer if Dr. Trump used last names in addition to first names a bit more frequently.

No surprise, but plenty of sad detail of a dysfunctional family.

Mary Trump paints a detailed picture of DJT and his family - all the influences that shaped our warped president.

Mostly because Donald Trump didn't want this to get out is the reason I read it. Anything to get under that orange skin. It's interesting, but not really revelatory. It mostly gives more (and personal) details of stuff that was already known. In fact, half the book is really about his brother and author's father, Freddy. If anything, this could potentially be used as a handbook for how to psychology unravel him, with discussions of his pathologies and their origins. In fact, there are times that you almost (ALMOST) feel sorry for Donald as potentially being little more than the sum of his own parents' pathologies.

Again, interesting, but don't expect any big bombshells.

Dr. Trump appears to have larger concerns than her own generational trauma, and I am happy she has brought her own vision to the American dilemmas of the twenty-first century. Her idea that the strain of Protestatism called Calvinism aided the idea of racial inequality, is quite in keeping with more directly historical work on that topic. The book is competent prose, and obviously well meant.

Interesting perspective on the Trump family. Short, quick easy read. I admire Mary Trump’s courage in writing this book but think she could have spent a little more time on it. I’m also not sure i completely buy into her “clinical” analysis of Donald and his siblings and what it was like for them growing up (before she was born!). It doesn’t seem as though she’s had much opportunity to know him as an adult either. Nevertheless, as Fred Trump’s daughter she definitely has some firsthand experiences and I think her assessments are probably pretty right on.

Interesting how Trump's father essentially created Donald and how poorly he (and Donald) treated the relatives.

Wow...just wow. Terrifying and sad and infuriating all at once. If I wasn't sure before, I am now, this man should not be the president of the United States. A good read that explains a lot. The timeline jumps around a lot, but all in all well written.

P.14-15:
"when Rhona Graff, Donald's long time gatekeeper, sent me and my daughter an invitation to attend Donald's election-night party in New York city, I declined. I wouldn't be able to contain my euphoria when Clinton's victory was announced, and I didn't want to be rude. at 5:00 the next morning, only a couple of hours after the opposite result had been announced, I was wandering around my house, as traumatized as many other people but in a more personal way: it felt as though 62,979,636 voters had chosen to turn this country into a macro version of My malignantly dysfunctional family."

P.35:
"thougg Fred's [Trump's father] business was built on the back of government financing, he loathed paying taxes and would do anything to avoid so. at the height of his empire's expansions, he never spent a dime he didn't have to, and he never acquired debt, an imperative that did not extend to his sons. bound by the scarcity mentality that had been shaped by world war I and the depression, Fred owned his properties free and clear. The profits his company generated from rent were enormous. in relation to his net worth, fred, whose children said he was 'tighter than a duck's ass,' lived a relatively modest life. despite the piano lessons and private summer camps – of a piece with his notion of what was expected for a man of his station in life – his two oldest children grew up feeling 'white poor.' Maryanne and Freddy walked the 15 minutes to public school 131, and when they wanted to go into the city, as everyone in the outer boroughs of New York refers to Manhattan, they took the subway from 169th Street. of course, they weren't poor – and aside from some early struggles after his father's death, Fred never had been, either."

P.136:
"in June 1990, Donald missed a $43 million payment for Trump's Castle. 6 months later, my grandfather sent his chauffeur with more than $3 million in cash to purchase chips at the Castle. in other words, he bought the chips with no intention of gambling with them; his driver simply put them in a briefcase and left the casino. even that wasn't enough. The next day, my grandfather wired another $150,000 to the Castle, presumably for more chips. Although those maneuvers helped temporarily, they resulted in my grandfather's having to pay a $30,000 fine for violating a gaming commission rule prohibiting unauthorized financial sources from lending money to casinos. If he wanted to continue lending Donald money to keep his casino afloat (which he did), he would also be required to get a gaming license in New Jersey. but it was too late. Donald might have controlled 30% of Atlantic City's Market share, but the Taj was making it impossible for his two other casinos to make money (the plaza and Castle lost a combined $58 million the year the Taj opened), the three properties carry $94 million in annual debt, and the Taj alone needed to pull in more than $1 million a day to break even."

P.155:
"my grandfather was having a bad day. most of us were gathered in the library when he came down the stairs, his mustache and eyebrows freshly dyed and his wig Askew but impeccably dressed in his three-piece suit.
The hair color and wig were recent innovations. my grandfather had always been vain about his appearance and bemoaned his receding hairline. Now his full head of hair gave him a slightly Shaggy appearance . Nobody said much about the wig, but the hair dye caused considerable consternation in the family, especially when we were going out in public. My grandfather often left the cheap drugstore dye on too long, turning his eyebrows and mustache a jarring shade of magenta. when he joined us in the library, obviously proud of what he done, Gam said, 'oh, for God's sake, fred.'
'Jesus christ, dad!' Donald yelled at him.
'for f***** sake,' Rob swore under his breath.
Maryanne, touching his arm, said, 'dad, you can't do that again.' "

P.197:
"In Donald's mind, he has accomplished everything on his own merits, cheating notwithstanding. how many interviews has he given in which he offers the obvious falsehood that his father loaned him a mere million dollars that he had to pay back but he was otherwise solely responsible for his success? It's easy to understand why he would believe this. nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the shrinking free world.
Donald today is much as he was at 3 years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information.
Donald's need for affirmation is so great that he doesn't seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn't condescend to be seen with outside of a rally. his deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he's soaked it in."

P.199:
"Though Donald's fundamental nature hasn't changed, since his inauguration the amount of stress he's under has changed dramatically. It's not the stress of the job, because he isn't doing the job – unless watching TV and tweeting insults count. It's the effort to keep the rest of us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing – about politics, civics, or simple human decency – that requires an enormous amount of work. for decades, he has gotten publicity, good and bad, but he's rarely been subjected to close scrutiny, and he's never had to face significant opposition. His entire sense of himself and the world is being questioned.
Donald's problems are accumulating because the maneuvering required to solve them, or to pretend they don't exist, has become more complicated, requiring many more people to execute the cover-ups. Donald is completely unprepared to solve his own problems or adequately cover his tracks. After all, the systems were set up in the first place to protect him from his own weaknesses, not help him negotiate The wider world.
The walls of his very expensive and well-guarded padded cell are starting to disintegrate. The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor. they either fail to see or refuse to believe that their fate will be the same as that of anyone else who pledged loyalty to him in the past. there seems to be an endless number of people willing to join the Claque that protects Donald from his own inadequacies while perpetuating his unfounded belief in himself. Although more powerful people put Donald into the institutions that have shielded him since the very beginning, it's people weaker than he is who are keeping him there."

P.202:
"every time you hear Donald talking about how something is the greatest, the best, the biggest, the most tremendous (the implication being that he made them so), you have to remember that the man speaking is still, in essential ways, the same little boy who is desperately worried that he, like his older brother, is inadequate and that he, too, will be destroyed for his inadequacy. at a very deep level, his bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long-dead father.
Donald has always been able to get away with making blanket statements ('I know more about [fill in the blank] than anybody, believe me' or the other iteration, 'nobody knows more about [fill in the blank] than me'); he's been allowed to riff about nuclear weapons, trade with china, and other things about which he knows nothing; he's gone essentially unchallenged when touting the efficacy of drugs for the treatment of covid-19 that have not been tested or engaging in an absurd, revisionist history in which he's never made a mistake and nothing is his fault."

P.209-210:
"While thousands of Americans die alone, Donald touts stock market gains. as my father Lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he'll facilitate it, and then he'll ignore the fact that you died.
Why did it take so long for Donald to act? Why didn't he take the novel coronavirus seriously? In part because, like my grandfather, he has no imagination. the pandemic didn't immediately have to do with him, and managing the crisis in every moment doesn't help him promote his preferred narrative that no one has ever done a better job than he has.
as the pandemic moved into its third, then fourth month, and the death toll continued its rise into the tens of thousands, the press started to comment on Donald's lack of empathy for those who have died and the families they leave behind. the simple fact is that Donald is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Telling the stories of those we've lost would bore him. acknowledging the victims of covid-19 would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise. Donald can no more advocate for the sick and dying than he could put himself between his father and freddy [Mary's deceased father]. perhaps most crucially, for Donald there is no value in empathy, no tangible upside to caring for other people. David Corn wrote, 'everything is transactional for this poor broken human being. Everything.' It is an epic tragedy of parental failure that my uncle does not understand that he or anybody else has intrinsic worth.

I can only imagine the Envy with which Donald watched Derek Chauvin's casual cruelty and monstrous indifference as he murdered George floyd; hands in his pocket, his insouciant gaze aimed at the camera. I can only imagine that Donald wishes it had been his knee on Floyd's neck."

A well-written book that spells out the steps tRumpedo's father and mother took to make the monstrously psychopathic human that is our supposed president. I imagine how horrifying it must be for Mary Trump to have to share a name with him. I am her fan.

This was an interesting read, and easy to follow. It explains a lot about how Donald Trump ended up the way he is, and also gives insight into the Trump family in general. Donald Trump is somewhat of a sympathetic figure because of his childhood, but no matter who is at fault, he is what he is now.

Someone thought there were spoilers in my review. I think it's safe to read, but it doesn't hurt to put warnings around some of the details.

His father, and Mary Trump's grandfather, Fred Trump, is the primary cause of the family's problems. He was interested only in making money and building his business, which was real estate. He spent all his time on this, and not much at all with his family. When Donald was young, his mother had problems that prevented her from caring for the family in the normal manner, so they were at the mercy of Fred, who Mary says was a sociopath. Fred's only concern for the family was that they obeyed him. He had no interest in having them improve themselves, only what would help him and his business. His oldest son, Fred Jr (Mary's father), loved flying and wanted to be a pilot. He was pretty successful for a while, but Fred didn't like it. He said it was nothing more than a taxi driver in the sky, and fought against it, causing poor Freddie, who was a bit weak, to begin drinking, and eventually fail at both making something of himself and later, at living.

Donald, the second oldest, watched Freddie's failures and punishments, and made sure to avoid those mistakes. He looked down on his brother because his father did. And his father started paying more attention to Donald, giving him everything more as a punishment to Freddie than anything else. For years, he gave Donald everything, made him an executive of the part of the business that required no work, plenty of money, etc. He began to see that Donald was not much good at work, but was good at promoting himself and the business to the powerful politicians and others at the time.

When Donald opened his casinos, Fred wasn't overjoyed, but he supported him because it was the Trump name. When Donald had troubles, Fred illegally bailed him out by secretly buying chips he never used. Donald was getting into trouble with the banks, and owed them a lot of money, too much for them to take a chance on cutting him off. They had to give him an allowance to keep him from overspending, although the allowance was pretty large. They were either fooled by his branding, or they were afraid of him.

Meanwhile, Donald learned from his father how to treat Freddie and the less worthy members of the family - meaning he treated them like crap. Freddie was a failure in their eyes, and his drinking got worse, along with depression at being a failure. He got sicker and sicker, and finally died at the family home. They never took him to a doctor or sought treatment, and didn't really seem to care; certainly not Donald or Fred.

When Mary Trump asked her grandfather to help her go to college, he just asked "Why?" He thought it was a waste of time.

Although the book is interesting, I was getting bored with it, mostly overloaded on Trump information. I know what he's like, and I now have some idea how he got that way. Now I just want to be rid of him. The only thing I know that might be useful is to learn more about the people who support him, and why. How did this clown manage to amass so many followers, who violently support him?

Bob Altermeyer, an expert in authoritarian research and coauthor of John Dean's new book about Trump, has a free e-book called "The Authoritarians". It came out in 1006, so isn't about Trump, but it is about authoritarians, and explains that the term refers to both the followers and the leaders. It's obvious why leaders become authoritarians, so much of the psychological research is about the followers, and why they are willing to follow these authoritarian leaders, and even fight for them. The book, in epub and pdf form, can be downloaded from his website at https://www.theauthoritarians.org/

not worth the time spent reading

This book really has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It has more to do with the authors issues with the family fortune and being disinherited. She sounds entitled and needs to address her issues with her fathers alcoholism. I found that this gives no new information regarding Donald Trump. And i still have no different opinion of him then i did before.

The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal.
by Mary L. Trump
Martins Press. 2021.
5 stars.

I enjoyed this book and Mary Trumps no- nonsense approach to what could be a national mental health crisis- although it is troubling. Our past has a way of following us and making a shadow that is not easily escaped. Mary Trump shares her own very personal feelings of hopelessness and helplessness while battling PTSD. Many people experience these feelings. Undiagnosed, untreated and misunderstood, many go untreated because they don't realize there is help, a way out. Discussing her own trauma and relating it to the recent events the USA continues to endure; how they contribute to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
When we face straight-on, the truth of our nations history, and we, as a nation of human beings can admit to and take responsibility for the racial and serial trauma inherently caused; we will be much closer to a day of reckoning. We can all begin to heal. Its our responsibility, as human beings, to find a way to have the courage to love.

Fast read, very well written. Enjoyed

Donald Trump had a brother, Fred, who was hounded into alcoholism and an early death by his exceedingly unpleasant family. With a doctorate in psychology, Fred III's daughter, Mary outlines the pressure cooker of a family Fed II was born into. Donald, after Fred II's discovery that Fred III was not going to be a carbon copy of himself was carefully groomed to become the heir apparent. It is Mary's considered opinion that her grandfather Fred II, was a sociopath and incapable of any kind of empathy. Donald John is to his niece's eyes a four year old, with no ability to work towards changing himself for the better. if you love DJT, the 45th president of the USA, you had best examine your life for the evidence of the condition known as masochism. Her prose is quite clear, and her vision seems born out by the reports of the man's conduct from other sources.

Insightful and terrifying look into the Trump Pathology

Mary L. Trump puts together both a fact based assessment of the pathology of her family of origin as well as a smoothly flowing narrative of it's history.

Concentrating on the patriarch of the family, Fred Trump, Mary richly describes the physical, emotional and psychological effects of his warped personality upon his sons, daughters and grandchildren.

I especially appreciated Mary's clinical assessment of how Fred and Mary Trump's neglect and lack of empathy created an environment for Donald to develop into a sociopath.

The issue of Mary's father's death and her siblings getting written out of the family will was handled well. I found the account to be credible and as unbiased as such could be.

What sticks in my mind is the implications of how someone as damaged as Donald Trump could make his way to the leader of the United States of America.

Mary Trump's conclusions are deeply disturbing, and given the events since the book was published, outright terrifying.