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Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

by Mary L. Trump

Simon & Schuster ·2020 ·225 pages
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
56/99
Bottom of the Pile

15/99

Critics' Rating Index

Near the Top

56/99

Readers' Rating Index

Top of the Pile

96/99

Scholars' Citation Index

95/99

Volume of Reviews

98/99

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About This Book

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world's health, economic security, and social fabric. Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald. A first-hand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald's place in the family spotlight and Ivana's penchant for re-gifting to her grandmother's frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump's favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's. Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump's lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider's perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world's most powerful and dysfunctional families.


Reviews

"It is something else altogether; it's a psychological profile of a horrible family."

David Aaronovitch· The Times (UK) Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Mary Trump's memoir is a modern-day Bleak House."

Edward Luce· Financial Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Writing with the sharp eye of a perpetual outsider in her own family, Trump presents a melancholic portrait of their complicity in her uncle's worst behaviors."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"I expected to encounter some seamy stuff in any history of the Trump family's fortune ..."

Virginia Heffernan· Los Angeles Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Mary, who was also a graduate student of comparative literature, knows how to tell a story and choose an anecdote ..."

Jennifer Szalai· The New York Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Too Much and Never Enough is a deftly written account of cross-generational trauma, but it is also suffused by an almost desperate sadness—sadness in the stories it tells and sadness in the telling, too."

Carlos Lozada· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Near the Top

"a ghastly tale laden with profound dynastic anguish: something like Succession crossed with Bleak House ..."

Josh Glancy· The Times (UK) Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"The revelations in Too Much and Never Enough may not change our picture of the president much, but they've certainly unnerved him and his siblings."

Alex Shephard· The New Republic Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"A modern-day Moloch, the president expects the nation to sacrifice itself."

Lloyd Green· The Guardian Read review ↗ Near the Top

"it goes on, coming to a head in the unbelievable story of Fred Trump's will."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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