Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention

NOBODY HATES TRUMP MORE THAN TRUMP: AN INTERVENTION is perhaps the only genuinely original thing you have read yet about Donald Trump. It can be read in a variety of ways: as a psychological investigation of Trump, as a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, as a satirical compilation of the “collected wit and wisdom of Donald Trump,” and above all as a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse—a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump. The book’s central thesis is that we have met the enemy and he is us. Who else but David Shields would make such an argument, let alone pull it off with such intelligence, brio, and wit, not to mention leaked off-air transcripts from Fox News?

------------- PRAISE -------------

Brian Fawcett, Dooney’s Cafe
“The best book, so far, on the political and cultural implications of Trump’s presidency. Shields has the widest range of curiosity of any American writer I’m aware of, and he almost never wastes your time. He nails what’s off-kilter and crazy about Donald Trump and the political psychosis he represents at least a hundred times, and in dozens of insightful ways. Shields is good enough, in this book, to earn the designation of being the writer most likely to be picked up and murdered should either right- or left-wing fundamentalists take power in the United States. This is a designation that hasn’t been conferred on an American writer since Philip K. Dick. What I’m saying is that Shields is that good. He is one of a very small group of true 21st century writers worthy of the tag, and I salute him as a master.”

Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
“You're unlikely to encounter another book so recklessly and unpredictably full of insight, even wisdom. Shields is the most exciting writer we have in America at the moment, the most startling and innovative.”

Tim Denevi
LitHub, Favorite Books of 2018
“A fantastic read.”

Neal Thompson, Seattle Spokesman-Review
Favorite Books of 2018

Toby Lichtig, TLS
“Often brilliant.”

Moshe Schulman, The Rumpus
“A sobering, nuanced, and—at times—brutally funny—psychological investigation into why Trump resonates with all, even the people who hate him.”

Cathy Alter, Washington [D.C.] Independent Review
“A mesmerizing study of power, how it isolates, how it infantalizes, how it amplifies our collective fears.”

Kirkus Reviews
“A compelling book offering something to offend nearly anyone.”

Publishers Weekly
“Shields weaves together wry observations.”

Shannon Laster, Open Letters Review
“Shields’s short book delivers the goods.”

Neal McNamara, Patch
“Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump has something new to say.”

"I wasn't going to read it because I'm so tired of anti-Trump shit, but I love the book, agree with everything Shields nails about this moment. It's the best summation of Trump I've come across. Such a relief to see someone get it. I was reading passages to my millennial Communist 'Trump is going to kill us all' bf, who didn't say anything, just rolled away."--Bret Easton Ellis

"Shields's most 'accessible' book and probably his best. Impossible to put down--a polyphonic bricolage that is both absolutely of this moment and deserving of a burial in a time capsule to be opened at another age. The clinical depression of our current historical circumstances is never absent from these pages, but while reading them, one does so with exultation at seeing Trump and his era so exactly skewered."--Jonathan Raban

"There's no other Trump book like this. No other book approaches the man and the situation in quite this way: the problem isn't out there; it's in us. Because it's a book for those who have a bit of trouble with the left and a ton of trouble with the right, it deserves a wide readership. I love the artfully and skillfully prismatic way it gets at the man and our collective arrival here. Shields starts with the specifics of Trump, then widens his lens, then narrows in again and again. It's almost a biography, almost a mystery, a kind of investigation, an opinion, piece, a speculation, an intervention."--Whitney Otto

"Marvelously, maddeningly compelling."--Bob Shacochis

"I love this book, which has Shields's signature: unending brilliance of juxtapositions, not to mention his nervy complicity that always makes his reading of the world a canny reading of the self. I like the psychoanalytic take, but I also like the non-literalness of it--'the media' as the mother and father from whom Trump is forever trying and failing to obtain complete love. It is indeed the manual for beating bullies we've all been waiting for."--Amitava Kumar

"As a person on whom nothing is lost, who goes on seeing after he shuts his eyes and never, ever stops thinking, Shields has experienced the age of Trump at a level that many folks couldn't bear. And thank heaven for this, because here we have a record so rich in insights, reflections, and found absurdities that it is a model for consciousness under siege in any period, not just our own."--Walter Kirn

"This is psycho-cultural criticism at its most lively and daring. Who would have thought it would be such a pleasure to read about contemporary catastrophe? Exciting and fun."--Tim Parks