Art of the Deal

[RobinReborn]

Has anybody read this book?

 

I tried reading it when I was 15 but didn't bother finishing it.  It made me not want to be a businessperson.  Of course I've changed since I was 15 so perhaps I should reread the book now.

[jts]

14 minutes ago, RobinReborn said:

Has anybody read this book?

 

I tried reading it when I was 15 but didn't bother finishing it.  It made me not want to be a businessperson.  Of course I've changed since I was 15 so perhaps I should reread the book now.

Did Donald Trump write that book?

 

[KorbenDallas]

Was Trump's "The America We Deserve" written by Trump?  From Salon.com, "Can we believe anything Trump says? Ghost writer of Donald’s campaign book confirms he’s just a blustery huckster":

Donald Trump’s first campaign book, “The America We Deserve,” was published in 2000, when the real estate mogul began flirting with political office. Like most campaign books, it was not written by the person whose face adorns the cover. Instead, the 286 pages of gas came from a ghost writer named Dave Shiflett.

[...]

Hmm, then how about the famous Bin Laden "prediction"?  From Factcheck.org, "Trump’s bin Laden ‘Prediction’":

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump exaggerates his prescience on the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he claims he “predicted Osama bin Laden” in a 2000 book.

Trump’s claim came during an interview on the Alex Jones Radio Show on Dec. 2 (starting at the 4:40-minute mark).

Trump, Dec. 2: I wrote a very political book years ago in the year 2000, “The America We Deserve,” and I said in that book that we better be careful with this guy named Osama bin Laden. I mean I really study this stuff. I really find it very interesting, and even though I’m a businessman I find it —  I’ve always found, I’ve always been involved in politics — I said we better be careful with Osama bin Laden. There’s a guy named Osama bin Laden. Nobody really knew who he was. But he was nasty. He was saying really nasty things about our country and what he wants to do to it. And I wrote in the book [in] 2000 — two years before the World Trade Center came down — I talked to you about Osama bin Laden, you better take him out. I said he’s going to crawl under a rock. You better take him out. And now people are seeing that, they’re saying, “You know, Trump predicted Osama bin Laden” – which actually is true. And two years later, a year and a half later he knocked down the World Trade Center.

“The America We Deserve,” which was published in January 2000, makes a single reference to bin Laden. It doesn’t warn “we better be careful with this guy named Osama bin Laden.” It doesn’t say the U.S. “better take him out.” And Trump’s reference to bin Laden as someone “nobody really knew” at the time is wrong, too.

Here’s the lone reference to bin Laden in Trump’s book:

Trump, “The America We Deserve,” January 2000: Instead of one looming crisis hanging over us, we face a bewildering series of smaller crises, flash points, standoffs, and hot spots. We’re not playing the chess game to end all chess games anymore. We’re playing tournament chess — one master against many rivals. One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the UN inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.

The book’s reference to bin Laden escaping U.S. jetfighters refers to an Aug. 21, 1998, attack ordered by then-President Clinton. The attacks were carried out in Afghanistan and Sudan in response to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earlier that month. They were designed to “disrupt bin Laden’s terrorist network,” as Clinton explained in a radio address.

Clinton, Aug. 22, 1998: Our goals were to disrupt bin Ladin’s terrorist network and destroy elements of its infrastructure in Afghanistan and Sudan. And our goal was to destroy, in Sudan, the factory with which bin Ladin’s network is associated, which was producing an ingredient essential for nerve gas.

So, bin Laden was well known by the time Trump’s book came out — even though Trump now says “nobody really knew who he was.” Also, the book doesn’t say the U.S. needs to redouble its efforts to “take him out,” as Trump now tells it.

Instead, the book criticizes the Clinton administration for its “haphazard” handling of “multiple threats.” Trump ends that section of the book by writing: “Yes, we do face multiple threats we didn’t face before. But this isn’t to say we are walking in the dark. Instead, we know who and what the threats are. The problem is that we’re totaling mishandling them.”

It does, in another part of the book, say that the U.S. is in danger of “the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the [1993] bombing of the World Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers,” referring to an earlier, less deadly attack in 1993. But he was not alone in that concern. As Trump writes in his book, “No sensible analyst rejects this possibility.” That was, after all, a reason why Clinton ordered the attack on bin Laden’s terrorism network in 1998. Clinton said he ordered the strikes to “protect our citizens from future attacks.”

But criticizing the Clinton administration for its handling of crises isn’t the same thing as “predicting Osama bin Laden.”

[end]

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, RobinReborn said:

Has anybody read this book?

 

I tried reading it when I was 15 but didn't bother finishing it.  It made me not want to be a businessperson.  Of course I've changed since I was 15 so perhaps I should reread the book now.

RR,

I read it.

Some people who don't like Trump probably did not and I doubt they will ever have good things to say about it.

But it's a good book. There are excellent business ideas in it. Also, if you want to understand Trump's approach to life and business, he's pretty much on-the-nose. And he gives you clearly several of the strategies he uses. (He plays to people's fantasies, his first offer is much different than what he really wants so the ensuing compromise gets him what he is after, he exaggerates to get press and believes good and bad press are beneficial, etc.)

For me, the Wollman Rink story alone is worth the effort of reading the book. You get to see how he works when he doesn't know a field, like how to make an ice-skating rink. He calls the top people and top competitors and asks them simple basic questions. After he educates himself, he continues and usually finishes the project with enormous competence, before the deadline and under budget.

You see him doing this same process as president-elect right now by calling on all kinds of people to visit him, even Kissinger and Romney. I get a kick out of all the media speculation. All they need to do is read his book and they will see clearly why he is doing this.

Now, about his co-author, Tony Schwartz... I believe Schwartz missed the limelight he received from this book because he has written several books since, but nothing has equalled the success of that one. He did write The Power of Full Engagement with Jim Loehr and it did pretty good, but nothing near The Art of the Deal.

Hunger for lost limelight is a powerful motivator. Along came the election. The mainstream press was in the tank for Hillary Clinton. All he had to do was bash Trump and he became a media darling for another 15 minutes of his life. So bash he did and he got his 15 minutes. But now they are up. The media has already chewed him up and spit him out.  

The Art of the Deal is basically a memoir of several of Trump's deals with his reflections on the happenings as the narrative goes along. It's an easy read and a great introduction to the personality and personal philosophy of our future president.

I highly recommend it.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]