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  • Published: 24 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9781847928245
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Lucky Loser

How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success

  • Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig



A masterpiece of narrative reporting and an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump's wealth, from two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters - revealing how a man once thought to be too rich to fail became the biggest loser of all.

Lucky Loser is an explosive investigation into the history of Trump’s wealth, drawing on over twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, business records and interviews with Trump insiders.

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump declared that life "has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me." Building on a decades-old narrative, he spun a fable of how he turned a small loan from his father into a multibillion-dollar empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except none of it was true. Born to a rich father, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today.

The story of Trump’s finances is one of a rise and fall, and another rise and fall, as he squanders fortunes on money-losing businesses, only to be saved by blind luck. He tacks his name above the door of every building while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it. He makes side deals to cut out the television producer who not only res­cued him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business guru – the public image that will carry him to the White House.

A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous examination spanning nearly a century, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. Here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money – what he had, what he lost, and what he has left – and the final word on the myth of Trump, the self-made billionaire.

  • Published: 24 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9781847928245
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Praise for Lucky Loser

A first-rate financial thriller ... one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read ... A multi-generational saga

New York Times

Meticulously documented ... Buettner and Craig have such a trove of documents, they are able to prove, in incontrovertible detail, the reality under the hype that is Donald Trump ... This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes

Washington Post

Shows that the popular caricature of Trump as a canny real estate titan - one painstakingly crafted by him, and by television producers - is more fact than fiction. ... With scalpel-like precision, [Buettner and Craig] paint a detailed portrait of just how much Trump was given to set him up for success in business, and the hundreds of millions of his father's money he squandered on bad deals ... Damning

Sunday Times

A page-turner ... Buettner and Craig delve more deeply into this story than anyone I've encountered

Guardian

Groundbreaking reporting ... comprehensive, persuasive, and packed with damning anecdotes

The New Yorker

Strikes at the heart of the Trump myth

Financial Times

I can’t emphasise this enough: Lucky Loser is a gripping, page-turning read, devastating in its meticulousness and thrilling in its narrative. If the devil is in the detail, this book is as close to Satan’s origin story as we’re ever going to get

Emma Brockes, Guardian

Buettner and Craig are relentless in picking apart every Trump misstatement … the pattern becomes clear … Lucky Loser shows us that Trump’s self-invention was largely based on lies

Literary Review

An expansive account of the New York Times reporters’ award-winning investigation into Trump’s finances

Financial Times, *Books of the Year*