I just finished Mary Trump's book, 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man'. It's devastating, not that it will change the minds of any of Donald Trump's 'base', since none of them will ever read it, but for the rest of us, it assures us that our views and opinions are correct.
Note that it's very obvious that this book was written by someone who understands the human psyche (Mary Trump is a clinical psychologist) but who also writes in a way that all of us can understand what it is that she's trying to tell us. In other words, it's well written and a fairly easy read.
Note that the first seven chapters (there are 14 chapters total, plus the prologue and epilogue) read like it could have been written well before her uncle, Donald, ran for office. Up to that point, it was basically a detailed telling of the Trump family story starting at a very interesting point in time, the 1918 flu pandemic, which took the life of Donald Trump's grandfather and left Donald's father Fred, at age 12, with almost nothing. From there the story shows how he became a successful builder and how his own sociopathic behavior laid the foundation for the dysfunction that befell the entire family. While there were five children and the parents, Mary Trump focuses most of her narrative on three individuals, her grandfather, Fred Sr, her father, Fred Jr (who was the second child and oldest son) and her uncle, Donald (who was the forth child, eight years younger than Fred Jr). So far she had written a small bit about her aunt Maryanne (the oldest child) but almost nothing about Elizabeth (the middle child) and Robert (the youngest), although she seemed to have been closer to Robert as he wasn't all that much older than her brother and she said he often seemed more like a sibling to them than an uncle.
Now during those first seven chapters she covers the relationship between her grandfather, Fred Sr and the two older boys, Fred Jr and Donald. Now, understandably so, she spends a lot of time covering the life story of her father, such as relating how he always wanted to be a pilot, was in the Air National Guard and eventually got a job flying for TWA. However, his father hated him for that because, being the oldest son, he was supposed to join the family business with the intention that he would eventually run it. This poor relationship led to Fred Jr's heavy drinking (Fred Sr was a teetotaler and would never allow a drop of alcohol in their house) which eventually lead to him being forced to resign his job at TWA, after only 11 months as a pilot, because of his drinking problem. This lead to him eventually having to go back to work for his father, Fred Sr.
Now starting with chapter eight, while it still feels like much of it was written before 2015, Mary Trump has begun to insert segments here and there which reference events and individuals inside the Trump White House. Even in chapter nine, it's still mostly historical narrative from the 70's, 80's and 90's.
It's quite obvious that Mary Trump was still writing this book right up to the point that it went to print. The last section, the epilogue, had to have been written no later than the first week of June since it references the nationwide unrest after the George Floyd tragedy. The epilogue also goes into very precise detail as to what could have been done to avoid the COVID-19 situation that we now find ourselves in, and why Donald Trump was totally incapable of acting in a way that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The day Trump made his first misstatement concerning the virus, was the day that he condemned all of us to the fate that we as a nation are now experiencing. All he would have had to do was say, sorry, I was wrong, I've consulted with the best experts in the world, and I'm going to do everything possible to see to it that their recommendations and advice is heeded and I will put the full weight of the federal government behind whatever it takes to defeat this 'silent enemy'. That's all it would have taken, but to do that he would have had to first say that, "When I spoke the other day, I was mistaken". Donald Trump is incapable of admitting that he has done anything in his life that wasn't 'prefect', the 'greatest' or 'beautiful', and he only has his father, and those who enable him, to blame.
BTW, Mary Trump has given a very prophetic title to the epilogue, 'The Tenth Ring', Anyone familiar with Dante's 'Inferno' will know, if they read this book and contemplate what our nation and the world has witnessed being done by Donald Trump and his minions these last four years, exactly why Mary Trump chose that title.
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