The Room Where It Happened

A White House Memoir

Hardcover, 592 pages

English language

Published March 17, 2020 by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:
9781982148034
Goodreads:
50690953

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.

The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting re-elected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the …

3 editions

Review of 'The Room Where It Happened' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I appreciated this book more than I expected, given my strong disagreements with many of the author's politics. Although Bolton comes off frequently as pompous and as having rather an inflated idea of his own opinion, never missing a chance to throw in a questionably-related quote or criticize pretty much anything Obama did, he also pulls few punches when it comes to Trump's behavior and provides some pretty valuable insights into how Trump comports himself "behind the scenes". So, despite the politics and arrogance (not to mention his irritating misuse of "beg the question" to mean "raise the question"), I'm glad he wrote it and I'm glad to have read it.