Nonfiction

All The Books About Trump’s Presidency…So Far

How many Trump books have been published since 2016? How much money would you have to spend to read them all? It's data time, book buddies!

Anna Gooding-Call Feb 22, 2019

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Anna Gooding-Call

Staff Writer

Anna Gooding-Call is a librarian and writer originally from rural central New York. She got her BA in the city that inspired "The Twilight Zone" and confirms that the hitchhikers really are weird there. Today, she lives in Massachusetts with her wife and two cats.

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Say what you will about a life of perfidy and misconduct, it’s fun to read about criminality. Devotees of true crime will insist that they’re there for the takedown, but really, who are they kidding? Without a proper buildup, that satisfying gotcha moment just doesn’t pop. If Ted Bundy doesn’t murder a bunch of innocent people, we won’t care when the police nab him. The misdeed is as important to the book’s readability as the sweet, sweet justice. This may explain why, midway through his chaotic first presidential term, we’ve got a thriving new genre based on books about Donald Trump.

I’m not going to discuss the degree to which these accounts are factual, because honestly, I have no idea. What I’d like to do is to count them and list them chronologically.

It would be nice if I could say, with perfect honesty, that this post is meant to highlight an unhealthy media obsession with a deeply troubled man who can’t help but hurt himself and the people around him for any amount of attention, good or bad. I’d love to be that deep and empathic.

It would also be lovely if I could somehow poignantly demonstrate that no educated body politic could derive meaningful information from this cacophony and respectfully debate whether the earnest efforts of journalists to provide critical information are noble or quixotic. I could even throw ex-administration authors into the picture as an example of how celebrity antics can make honest journalism seem foolish through association. That would probably be a very intellectual and interesting piece. I’d have citations. Maybe even an interview.

However, I am first and foremost a librarian. I like data and I don’t have enough about this bizarre new true crime/celebrity bio/political thriller genre to draw any real conclusions about it. For example, how many Trump books are there, excluding self-published works? At what rate are they hitting the shelves? How much would it cost to buy one copy of every title published since 2016? Until I know this esoterica, I must not only forbear from speculating about the genre’s qualities and future, but I must spend my livelong nights staring, red-eyed, at the ceiling, haunted. So let’s dive right into the good part: the numbers.

The Stats

I found no less than 51 qualifying books about the Trump presidency, excluding self-published works. I’ll list them below in chronological order. Maybe you have a weird-ass reading list you’d like to add them to. Also, it’s entirely possible that I missed some, so please do comment about them if so. Heaven knows we need more of this nonsense. Check out the graph below if you’re more of a visual processor.

We’re getting new Trump books at an average rate of about 1.5 per month, if we start counting with The Truth About Trump from May 2016. However, 60% of the genre came out in 2018 alone. That’s 30 books in a 12-month period, or an average of 2.5 books per month. Publication clumped in the fall, likely because November was an election season. September of that year saw the debut of six Trump books; October generated five more. Expect the rate of Trump book publication to accelerate again as we approach the 2020 election.

Cory Lewandowsi, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, and David Cay Johnston have each written two Trump books. I’ve marked the 10 books authored by former campaign or administration employees with a triangle. Roger Stone’s second Trump book isn’t on the list because as of this writing, it hasn’t been published yet.

To give these numbers some context, I have found less than 10 books written about or by Barack Obama during his presidency and campaign. Two of those were by Obama himself. I have also found 16 Obama books that hit the shelves after Trump swore in. Some are laudatory and nostalgic, others are hostile. Many seem to be reactions to the Trump presidency one way or another. It may be useful, if demoralizing, to consider Obama books a genre variant on or offshoot of Trump books.

Cost

New hardcover copies of each Trump book cost between $25 and $30, but paperbacks, used copies, and price cuts of 50% or more abound. This suggests that the genre, whose material is entertaining but fairly narrow in scope, may be approaching some kind of market saturation. Eventually, perhaps there will be nothing more to say about the President’s competence or lack thereof. At that point, it’s unclear what will happen to this ballooning literary phenomenon. A bubble bust situation seems possible.

If you’ve bought and read a new copy of every single representative of the Trump genre over the past three years, then congratulations! You’ve spent about $1,305 on Trump books. Of course, if you’ve borrowed them from your public library, then they have spent about $1,305—maybe a little less with their library discount, maybe a little more if they’ve gone in for multiple copies of the most notable titles. That money came from you anyway, because you pay taxes. In that sense, if you’ve bought any Trump books with your own post-taxes income, you’ve kinda double-paid. Sorry, pal.

Preorders and Legacy Hits

However, judging from America’s recent surge in political nonfiction sales, you’re not alone in your desire to possess a book of Trump. Plenty of people are grabbing the hits right off the shelves and slapping down real money for them, which has elevated several onto the New York Times bestseller list. Buyers are also ordering them ahead. Woodward’s book alone topped 1 million presale units. I haven’t even attempted to count sales of legacy books by and about the president. Older titles concerning Trump have also benefitted from our current political drama. While these could be considered associated and possibly entangled with true Trump presidency books, they were written in a different context and never intended for the same informative purposes. Therefore, I have excluded them from the scope of my research.

So here’s the whole list of books about the Trump presidency, every one I could find published post–January 2016, arranged chronologically. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the positions these books take, and nor do I consider every single one a viable and reliable source. However, they are now an undeniable feature of the publishing landscape. For how long, who knows? When this administration passes, as it inevitably will, it will leave behind a historic trail of literary detritus. Let’s hope it’s doing somebody some good.

The Truth About Trump by Michael D’Antonio, May 2016