Devil's bargain : Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the storming of the presidency / Joshua Green.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Penguin Press, c2017Description: xiii, 272 pages ; 25 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780735225022
- 0735225028
- 324.973/0932 23
- JK526 2016 .G74 2017
Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Bedford Public Library Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction | 324.973 GRE | Available | 32500001731307 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The instant #1 New York Times bestseller.
From the reporter who was there at the very beginning comes the revealing inside story of the partnership between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump--the key to understanding the rise of the alt-right, the fall of Hillary Clinton, and the hidden forces that drove the greatest upset in American political history.
Based on dozens of interviews conducted over six years, Green spins the master narrative of the 2016 campaign from its origins in the far fringes of right-wing politics and reality television to its culmination inside Trump's penthouse on election night.
The shocking elevation of Bannon to head Trump's flagging presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, hit political Washington like a thunderclap and seemed to signal the meltdown of the Republican Party. Bannon was a bomb-throwing pugilist who'd never run a campaign and was despised by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Yet Bannon's hard-edged ethno-nationalism and his elaborate, years-long plot to destroy Hillary Clinton paved the way for Trump's unlikely victory. Trump became the avatar of a dark but powerful worldview that dominated the airwaves and spoke to voters whom others couldn't see. Trump's campaign was the final phase of a populist insurgency that had been building up in America for years, and Bannon, its inscrutable mastermind, believed it was the culmination of a hard-right global uprising that would change the world.
Any study of Trump's rise to the presidency is unavoidably a study of Bannon. Devil's Bargain is a tour-de-force telling of the remarkable confluence of circumstances that decided the election, many of them orchestrated by Bannon and his allies, who really did plot a vast, right-wing conspiracy to stop Clinton. To understand Trump's extraordinary rise and Clinton's fall, you have to weave Trump's story together with Bannon's, or else it doesn't make sense.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [249]-263) and index.
"It will take a miracle" -- "Where's my Steve?" -- Bildungsroman -- "A dangerous way to look at the world" -- Nobody builds walls like Trump -- The alt-Kochs -- A rolling tumbleweed of wounded male id and aggression -- "The traffic is absolutely filthy!" -- "Honest populism" -- Burn everything down -- "The FBI has learned of the existence..." -- Afterword: Kali Yugo.
The elevation of Bannon to head Trump's flagging presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, seemed to signal the meltdown of the Republican Party. Bannon was a bomb-throwing pugilist despised by Democrats and Republicans alike. Green shows that, to understand Trump's extraordinary rise and Clinton's fall, you have to weave Trump's story together with Bannon's, or else it doesn't make sense.
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Veteran journalist Green offers persuasive answers to questions about how Donald Trump won the presidency in this timely book that builds on the serendipitous relationship Green had developed with Trump advisor Steve Bannon since 2011. That access paid off in spades when Bannon was brought aboard a floundering Trump presidential campaign in 2016. It enabled Green to provide dramatic "you are there" scenes, as in the opening section, when, on election eve, an anonymous campaign advisor (whom Bannon guesses is Kellyanne Conway) told CNN that it would take a miracle to win. Beyond those Woodwardesque fly-on-the-wall moments, Green provides insights into Bannon, "a brilliant ideologue from the outer fringe of American politics-and an opportunistic businessman-whose unlikely path happened to intersect with Trump's at precisely the right moment in history." His analysis shows how the election's outcome was shaped both by chance developments, such as Hillary Clinton's email issue resurfacing in connection with Anthony Weiner, and strategic decisions, such as where the Trump and Clinton campaigns focused their efforts. There will be revelations even for readers who follow the news avidly, such as Trump's onetime popularity with African-Americans and Latinos during his stint hosting Celebrity Apprentice, but the book's primary value lies in making Trump's surprise victory seem unsurprising, and in showing Bannon as more than a one-dimensional caricature. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.Booklist Review
After finishing this account of the Steve Bannon-Donald Trump relationship, some readers may want to take a bath something that presidential advisor Bannon, according to at least one source, doesn't do that often. Author Green's look at how Trump and Bannon found and recognized each other, if not precisely as kindred souls, but as useful tools, makes for discouraging reading about the current state of politics. In many ways, the book is more like a long-form magazine piece than an in-depth analysis. Beginning with the surprise election-night victory (a surprise even to the Trumpites), the narrative moves briskly through the 2016 campaign, with stops to fill in Bannon's history (these are the most useful sections). Green goes beyond the bullet points of Bannon's résumé served in the U.S. Navy, worked at Goldman Sachs to explain just how those institutions shaped him. A risk taker, enamored of macho culture, Bannon saw it as a logical step during the campaign to muster an army of mostly young, mostly white male gamers and shape them into an anti-Hillary, alt-right army. Generally, rather than being thoroughly quote-sourced (though Green details in the introduction that he interviewed Bannon several times), the book has the feel of being written on the fly and it delivers a few fly-on-the-wall scoops. The last chapter, which takes a look at the current relationship between these two alpha males, is written with the realization that things in this administration change so quickly that observations become almost instantly out-of-date. A first draft of history; to be continued.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2017 BooklistKirkus Book Review
How a radical conservative with "cult-leader magnetism" became a powerful political force.When Green (co-author: Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, 2013) first met Steve Bannon in 2011, he "quickly sized him up as a colorful version of a recognizable Washington character type: the political grifter seeking to profit from the latest trend." An investigative reporter, former senior editor of the Atlantic, and weekly political columnist for the Boston Globe, Green spent the next several years immersed in right-wing politics, resulting in a profile of Bannon for Bloomberg Businessweek, where Green is now senior national correspondent. Drawing on his own articles, as well as interviews and abundant media coverage, the author fashions a vivid, fast-paced narrative about the people and events that culminated in "the greatest political upset in modern American history," which even the politically astute Green did not see coming. How did this happen? is the question that drives the book. A crucial piece of the puzzle, writes the author, is Bannon, "a brilliant ideologue" and "opportunistic businessman" who, before meeting Trump, had focused his "populist-nationalist ideas" on supporting Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and on destroying Hillary Clinton. After seven years in the Navy, Bannon, "intoxicated by the go-go Reagan eighties," set his sights on Wall Street. He got into Harvard Business School, where his working-class roots set him apart from his well-heeled classmates. He excelled academically and was hired by Goldman Sachs, eventually leaving to dabble "in minor Hollywood moguldom," followed by a stint at a Hong Kong video game company. Back in Los Angeles, he met Andrew Breitbart, who became his guru. Green adroitly portrays many other players in the tumultuous 2016 campaign: Robert Mercer, who "resembled the bloodless capitalist hero in an Ayn Rand novel," and his savvy daughter Rebekah, who convinced Trump to hire Bannon and Kellyanne Conway; Paul Manafort; Chris Christie; and a cadre of people working to bring down Hillary Clinton. Behind the scenes and ripped from the headlines, Green's saga exuberantly traces Trump's wild ride to the presidency. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Joshua Green is an American journalist, born in 1972. He previously worked as an editor for The Onion, The American Prospect, and The Washington Monthly, and senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New Yorker, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. Currently, he is a senior correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, covering politics for the magazine and Bloomberg Politics. His writings have been published in anthologies such as The Best Political Writing, and The Bob Marley Reader. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency.(Bowker Author Biography)