Headline-grabbing fly-on-the-wall view of the dysfunctional playroom that is the Trump White House."What is this white trash'?" asks a fashion model of Donald Trump. He replies, "They're people just like me, only they're poor." There's a certain Snopes-comes-to-the-big-city feel to celebrity journalist Wolff's (Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age, 2015, etc.) tawdry portrait of the current occupants of the White House, which, writes the author, is based on conversations with the president and his senior staff and backed by hundreds of hours of recordings. Given the many competing fiefdoms in the West Wing, Wolff adds, no one wholly endorsed his access ("the president himself encouraged this idea," he says), but no one quite said no, either. The results are damning, those competing fiefdoms not just jealous of their turf, but also vicious in their characterizations of the other side. Most aggressively nasty, by the author's account, is former assistant Steve Bannon, who describes Trump as "a simple machine" with a binary of flattery and calumny, while he declares that "I am the leader of the national-populist movement" and suggests that Trumpism can do fine without its namesakewho, he adds, will not be around for a second term. Wolff has plenty of sting himself. Of one-time intern-turned-power broker Stephen Miller, he sneers, "he was supposed to be the house intellectual but was militantly unread," while he suggests that the dumb-as-a-brick (Bannon's characterization) Ivanka's relationship with her father is purely transactional: "It was business. Building the brand, the presidential campaign, and now the White Houseit was all business." No one in the administration seems up to the job he or she is supposed to be doing, and there's an ugly, startling instance of incompetence on every page.The White House has naturally denied and decried Wolff's account, but even if it's only halfway accurate, it presents an appalling view of a frighteningly unqualified and unprepared gang that can't think straight. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This much-discussed take on the Trump presidency reads like a cross between The Emperor's New Clothes and The Twilight Zone. The commentary from the ever-giddy talking heads on the excerpts that have appeared in the last several days has focused on the juicy tidbits (and, really, they're all juicy) concerning what the palace guard really thinks of Donald Trump, but there is also context here for the dysfunction and infighting that have made the president's first year so rocky. That said, there are plenty of warning signs about the book's sourcing. First and foremost, author Wolff gives a rather convoluted description of how he researched the book. Yes, he did interviews, but he also includes second-hand stories; sometimes, Wolff says, there was no way to verify accounts, so he leaves it to the reader to decide what's true. Yet the text is mostly written in an omnipresent voice, so it's difficult to determine what you're reading material from interviews or second-hand sources or pure speculation from moment to moment. In other words, a middle-grade nonfiction book typically has clearer sourcing. At the same time, while the book may have a truthiness feel about it, many commentators have come forward to say that what Wolff says stacks up with what White House observers have been reporting. Among the most telling information is that the administration felt expertise, that liberal virtue, was overrated. As shown throughout, the president, believes most of all in his gut instincts, no matter what the facts say. It is also fascinating learn about how three factions Steve Bannon, Ivanka and Jared, and Reince Priebus fought, often with each other, to move the president and his polices in the direction each wanted. Alternatively, in ways both funny and frightening, this account does reveal a distressing level of dysfunction, starting with Wolff's ability to sit on a couch in the White House for months without someone kicking him out. Fake news or genuine exposé, this will have people talking for a long time or until the next presidential tweet.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2018 Booklist

Wolff (Television is the New Television) presents an insider's look at the extreme dysfunction of the Trump administration in this searing real-life page-turner, based on hundreds of conversations conducted over 18 months, including with most of Trump's senior staff. He starts by showing how the seeds for chaotic governance were sown in the election campaign, which almost no one close to Trump thought would succeed. (His wife, Melania, was one of the few exceptions.) Wolff then walks the reader through the tumult of the first eight months of Trump's presidency, including the rambling speech to CIA staffers in which the president said that the U.S. should have "kept" Iraq's oil; the casual approach to enacting a travel ban on immigrants from majority-Muslim countries; the firings of Michael Flynn and James Comey; and the exodus of key officials, including advisor Steve Bannon. Wolff peppers his narrative with devastating assessments of the president from those with close access to him: Former White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh stated that trying to understand Trump was "like trying to figure out what a child wants." And longtime Trump political aide Sam Nunberg remarked, "Is Trump a good person, an intelligent person, a capable person? I don't even know." While Wolff's use of anonymous "deep background" sources may give readers reservations about the accuracy of every detail, this explosive account will undoubtedly remain a topic of conversation for the near future. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

FIRE AND FURY: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff. (Picador, $18.) Remember the book that had everyone talking this time last year? In Wolff's telling, President Trump is a barely literate chief executive who heads up a chaotic, aberrant White House. The anecdotes are entertaining, if deeply unrewarding (and at their worst, thinly sourced). A media reporter, Wolff is strongest on his subject's insecurities and psychological hang-ups. THE POWER, by Naomi Alderman. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $16.99.) One of the Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017, this novel imagines the sudden emergence of an "electrostatic power" in women that upends gender dynamics across the world. Through the lives of several female characters, the story explores a grim idea: that no one is immune to power's corruptive effects. OFF THE CHARTS: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies, by Ann Hulbert. (Vintage, $16.95.) Why do many exceptional children fail to sustain their success into adulthood? Hulbert offers an empathetic view of some child geniuses, including Shirley Temple and Bobby Fischer. She aims to "listen hard for the prodigies' side of the story," as she puts it. At the same time, she avoids preachy parenting advice. THE LARGESSE OF THE SEA MAIDEN: Stories, by Denis Johnson. (Random House, $17.) This posthumous collection takes up many of Johnson's central themes, including his preoccupation with mortality. Johnson died in 2017, and his impending death is felt on the margins of these last stories, without straying into morbidity. As our reviewer, Rick Moody, wrote, Johnson draws on his "singular skill" for revelation to "brighten the interiors of tragedy and help us wave off the vultures hovering above." HIPPIE FOOD: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, by Jonathan Kauffman. ( Morrow/ HarperCollins, $16.99.) Kauffman, a food reporter, outlines how the counterculture of the 1960s continues to shape American tastes and diets today. Our reviewer, Michael Pollan, said that this entertaining history shows that the hippie ideal "has lost none of its power, and continues to feed a movement." THREE DAUGHTERS OF EVE, t by Elif Shafak. (Bloomsbury, $18.) At an upscale dinner party in present-day Istanbul, Peri recalls her college days at Oxford, where she and two friends came to be known as the Sinner, the Confused and the Believer. Shafak, one of Turkey's best-known authors, explores the relationship between faith and doubt in a time of political upheaval.