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'peril' details the capitol riot and trump's last-ditch effort to hold onto power.

Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa Simon & Schuster hide caption

Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

Bob Woodward's third book — after Fear and Rage — about Donald Trump turns out to be just as much about President Biden and how he got to be Trump's successor.

But dominating the pre-publication publicity and reaction is one explosive revelation that detonates in the prologue.

The book is Peril, the third volume in Woodward's "Trump trilogy" — this one written with fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.

The revelation, as anyone with social media or a cable TV connection knows, is that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called his counterpart in the Chinese military to assuage Chinese fears about Trump launching some sort of American attack. Woodward and Costa report this happened once in October before the election and once after the Jan. 6 riot that breached the U.S. Capitol and routed members of the House and Senate.

Trump immediately said that the story, "if true," meant Milley had committed treason. That idea has been echoed by Republican officeholders and conservative commentators and a variety of other critics. Milley's spokesperson at the Pentagon said top U.S. commanders regularly communicate with their counterparts in other countries, including China and Russia. The White House said much the same.

Gen. Milley Defends His Call To A Chinese General About Trump's Rhetoric And The U.S.

But in Peril, Milley is also quoted speaking with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Jan. 6 about the need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office before his term ends. According to the book, Milley cites the president's "mental decline," and Pelosi uses the term "crazy." In this account, the two are clearly worried that Trump will attempt some use of his power as commander in chief in a last-ditch effort to keep Biden from being inaugurated on Jan. 20.

These incidents had not been reported previously, although readers of I Alone Can Fix It by two other Post reporters, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, had already learned of Milley's fears regarding Trump's potential misuse of the military. More than a few readers saw Milley emerge from those pages as a national hero — Horatius blocking the bridge to autocracy.

But Woodward and Costa expand on this theme and add extensive detail. Milley was prompted by U.S. intelligence indicating the Chinese saw routine U.S. exercises near their shores as threatening, given Trump's hostile rhetoric and erratic behavior, they write. The general wanted to head off any misperceptions of U.S. intent or resolve, ones he thought might lead to war.

Both books relate how Milley had been offended when Trump put him and other top defense officials on display in the Lafayette Park incident in June 2020. That incident brought the Black Lives Matter protests over the killing of George Floyd to the center of the 2020 presidential campaign. It was an inflection point, a truly historic moment, but just one of many events that fly by as these authors speed-tour the campaign year.

Some familiar turning points, some new

Some of these landmarks are familiar, such as Trump's well-reported reaction to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and his exchange with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who begs him to make it stop. "Well Kevin," Trump is quoted as saying, "Maybe these people are just more upset about the election than you are."

But other meaningful moments highlighted here have the quality of discovery. It has been conventional wisdom that Rep. James Clyburn, the House Democratic whip, turned his party's presidential process around by endorsing Biden just before his home state of South Carolina's primary on Feb. 29. But here the authors get well inside that relationship.

They tell how Clyburn took Biden aside during intermission in the Charleston debate that week to remind him of his promise to mention appointing a Black woman to the Supreme Court. "You can't leave the stage without doing that," they quote Clyburn saying. "You just got to do that." Biden agreed, the book recounts, returned to the stage and made the pledge. "The crowd roared," the authors report. "Clyburn nodded."

And the next day, Clyburn issued a clarion endorsement prompting a surge of African American votes for Biden, who would beat Bernie Sanders, the previous front-runner, by 30 points. Several rival candidates immediately withdrew and endorsed Biden. Soon the authors are taking us on Sanders' campaign plane to hear him tell his campaign manager to call Biden's people: "Just ask them if there's a role for progressives to play in their campaign."

After March of 2020, however, all the most vivid moments happen in Trump's White House, the book notes. Frustrated on several levels by the pandemic, he insists on getting back out on the hustings, then berates others when the first rally in Tulsa, Okla., is a bust. He presses his attorney general and White House attorney to end birthright citizenship, to prosecute people involved in the FBI investigation of his campaign in 2016 and to join in a longshot lawsuit against Obamacare. They resist, and Trump rages.

After the election has taken place, Peril becomes the inside tale of Trump's increasingly irrational efforts to challenge the result. When Attorney General William Barr tells Trump there is no evidence of fraud, the two are immediately estranged, and Barr leaves office early. Thereafter, Trump relies on legal advice from a volatile Rudy Giuliani, then an even more controversial attorney named Sidney Powell and finally MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.

Darkness over the White House

Trump Consistently Bends Reality, Sells His Narrative In Interviews For Woodward Book

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The atmosphere throughout this work is foreboding, darkened by the shadow COVID-19 cast over the country but also by the dangers to democracy the authors perceive and depict.

Peril has been a highly anticipated third volume, even in a season of such tomes. But Peril has a dual focus; the cover is half Trump's face, half Biden's. The authors want to illuminate the entire campaign year and the early months of the Biden presidency as well.

So after the gut-punch prologue, the narrative pivots immediately to Biden in Chapter 1, recalling his reaction to the Charlottesville, Va., riot in 2017 as a dynamic restart for his political ambitions. Thereafter, the authors alternate between the innermost councils of Trump World and the corresponding circle of people around Biden, re-creating scenes of high and low drama with extensive dialogue quoted directly. (Some pages of Peril read almost like a screenplay.)

Much of this dialogue is attributed to either Trump or Biden, although neither sat for an interview for this book. Woodward uses material from his earlier Trump interviews for Rage , and the authors have been provided transcripts of some conversations. But most of these detailed exchanges that provide so much of the life of the book are re-created from the shared recollections of 200 other participants whom the authors interviewed.

Before and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol

The climax of the narrative is the Jan. 6 riot to which everything builds and from which all that follows is denouement. Woodward and Costa do hold the new administration at critical arm's length, noting the confusion over Afghanistan and the struggles to unite Democratic Party factions behind the Biden agenda in Congress.

But the authors' perspective on Biden remains far more positive than their view of Trump, caught in the crosshairs here as in Woodward's earlier books. The authors evince respect for Biden's team, including chief of staff Ron Klain and longtime aide Mike Donilon. There is admiration for first lady Jill Biden. And while they devote a chapter to Hunter Biden, the troubled son whose efforts at rehab for drugs and alcohol are chronicled in his own autobiography , Beautiful Things, they do not dwell on this Achilles' heel.

Still, if one is looking for heroes in all this, the list begins with those Trump appointees and Republican officials who pushed back. Milley was far from alone, and the memoirs of others in the national security space — former Defense Secretary James Mattis and former national security adviser John Bolton in particular — have cast these internal conflicts in bold relief.

The authors devote substantial attention to Vice President Mike Pence, the former Indiana governor Trump elevated to the national ticket as a signal to white evangelical Protestants. Pence was a model of unwavering support through the trials of the 2016 fall campaign and the trying moments thereafter. But when Trump tried to recruit him in a far-fetched scheme to overturn the Electoral College, Pence balked. Led by his well-respected chief of staff, Marc Short, Pence consulted a constellation of conservative legal stars. He also called his fellow Indiana Republican Dan Quayle, the former vice president for George H.W. Bush.

Pence pressed the president's case with Quayle, and with others, the authors report. Wasn't there some way the Congress could get involved, even at this late date, to reopen the results? Quayle was succinct, quoted in the book as saying: "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away."

Perhaps the most difficult characters to categorize are the windsock senators, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Graham, from South Carolina, was a rival GOP candidate excoriating Trump in 2016, then a close confidant and ally once Trump became the nominee and president. Graham bailed out on Jan. 6, complaining that Trump's claims of a stolen election were baseless. But he still golfs with the former president and pleads with him to move on and think about 2024.

Just as confusing are the mixed messages from McConnell, the Senate Republican leader whom Trump consults and relies on and then consigns to perdition after McConnell congratulates Biden on his win. McConnell even now remains guarded and ambivalent on all things Trump, it appears, always calculating how any move will affect him and his party colleagues in the Senate.

A series of side by sides

Ultimately the book compares two men, two presidencies and two utterly different approaches to human relationships.

Trump is the more compelling figure, the sun within his own universe and the driving force in national politics. Biden seems less sure of himself, less forceful in debate, often more importuning than commanding.

But Trump also comes across as impatient, often delusional and obsessed with his own personal scoreboard. He is impatient and intolerant of dissent. Biden comes across as comparatively benign, inclined to listening and even saying he's sorry.

But perhaps what stands out most in each of the book's 72 mini-chapters is the contrast between how the two men treat their immediate circle of staff and associates. Trump demands, rages, curses and shouts. Even Cabinet members go away feeling browbeaten.

While we also hear Biden curse, he also winces and sighs and even whines a bit. He scrambles to correct for his failings, such as his habit of greeting women with too much touching and hugging. He backed off at the urging of his wife, as the authors relate, but as a problem this bespeaks his often-mentioned empathy. It is why he can have personal tête-à-têtes with other senators, even phone calls of a medium clubby-chummy nature with McConnell, his official chief impediment in Washington.

Trump's devotees loved that he disdained such outreach, that he proclaimed himself immune from "the miasma of the D.C. swamp," the book notes. His success at bullying his way through and past barriers and precedents drove the successes of his term. A big tax cut bill and regulatory reductions. Three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of other federal judges for life.

But it also cost him the service of many who could have helped, isolating him in the end with a claque of conspiracy peddlers. In so doing, he limited his opportunities to shape the world further, or at least the domestic politics of his time.

Woodward and Costa

This is Woodward's 21st book and his first with a co-author in many years. He began his book-writing career nearly half a century ago, producing All the President's Men with Carl Bernstein, his reporting partner on The Post's Watergate coverage in the early 1970s.

While not as well-known outside Washington as Woodward (who is?), Costa has been the host of PBS' Washington Week as well as a Post reporter. He left the PBS hosting slot at the beginning of 2021 to collaborate with Woodward, whom he has described as his mentor.

At 35, he is less than half Woodward's age, but he has built a formidable reputation over the past decade, beginning as a reporter for National Review, known for his contacts with and coverage of Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010 . He joined The Washington Post in 2013.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

by Bob Woodward & Robert Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 21, 2021

A solid work of investigation that, while treading well-covered ground, offers plenty of surprises.

An account of the last gasps of the Trump administration, completing a trilogy begun with Fear  (2018) and Rage  (2020).

One of Woodward and fellow Washington Post  reporter Costa’s most memorable revelations comes right away: Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling his counterpart in Beijing to assure him that even after Jan. 6 and what Milley saw as an unmistakable attempt at a coup d’état, he would keep Trump from picking a war with China. This depiction has earned much attention on the talking-heads news channels, but more significant is its follow-up: Milley did so because he was concerned that Trump “might still be looking for what Milley called a ‘Reichstag moment.’ ” Milley emerges as a stalwart protector of the Constitution who constantly courted Trump’s ire and yet somehow survived without being fired. No less concerned about Trump’s erratic behavior was Paul Ryan, the former Speaker of the House, who studied the psychiatric literature for a big takeaway: “Do not humiliate Trump in public. Humiliating a narcissist risked real danger, a frantic lashing out if he felt threatened or criticized.” Losing the 2020 election was one such humiliation, and Woodward and Costa closely track the trajectory of Trump’s reaction, from depression to howling rage to the stubborn belief that the election was rigged. There are a few other modest revelations in the book, including the fact that Trump loyalist William Barr warned him that the electorate didn’t like him. “They just think you’re a fucking asshole,” Barr told his boss. That was true enough, and the civil war that the authors recount among various offices in the White House and government reveals that Trump’s people were only ever tentatively his. All the same, the authors note, having drawn on scores of “deep background” interviews, Trump still has his base, still intends vengeance by way of a comeback, and still constitutes the peril of their title.

Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-982182-91-5

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | U.S. GOVERNMENT | PUBLIC POLICY | POLITICS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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SEEN & HEARD

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

WHO'S AFRAID OF GENDER?

by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024

A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.

A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.

In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence , Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.

Pub Date: March 19, 2024

ISBN: 9780374608224

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024

POLITICS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | PUBLIC POLICY | WOMEN & FEMINISM | LGBTQ | U.S. GOVERNMENT

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Peril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warning

Behind the headlines about Gen Milley, China and the threat of nuclear war lies a sobering read about democracy in danger

D onald Trump is out of a job but far from gone and forgotten. The 45th president stokes the lie of a rigged election while his rallies pack more wallop than a Sunday sermon and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

“We won the election twice!” Trump shouts. His base has come to believe. They see themselves in him and are ready to die for him – literally. Covid vaccines? Let the liberals take them.

Deep red Mississippi leads in Covid deaths per capita. Florida’s death toll has risen above 50,000. This week alone, the Sunshine State lost more than 2,500. Then again, a century and a half ago, about 258,000 men died for the Confederacy rather than end slavery. “Freedom?” Whatever.

One thing is certain: against this carnage-filled backdrop Bob Woodward’s latest book is aptly titled indeed.

Written with Robert Costa, another Washington Post reporter, Peril caps a Trump trilogy by one half of the team that took down Richard Nixon. As was the case with Fear and Rage, Peril is meticulously researched. Quotes fly off the page. The prose, however, stays dry.

This is a curated narrative of events and people but it comes with a point of view. The authors recall Trump’s admission that “real power [is] fear”, and that he evokes “rage”.

Peril quotes Brad Parscale, a discarded campaign manager, about Trump’s return to the stage after his ejection from the White House.

“I don’t think he sees it as a comeback,” Parscale says. “He sees it as vengeance.”

Parscale knows of whom and what he speaks. His words are chilling and sobering both.

The pages of Peril are replete with the voices of Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general. Each seeks to salvage a tarnished reputation, Milley’s somewhat, Barr’s badly.

In June 2020, wearing combat fatigues, Milley marched with Trump across Lafayette Square, a historic space outside the White House which had been forcibly cleared of anti-racism protesters so the president could stage a photo op at a church. The general regrets the episode. Others, less so.

In an earlier Trump book, I Alone Can Fix It , Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker, also of the Post, captured Milley telling aides just days before the attack on the Capitol on 6 January, “This is a Reichstag moment.” This week, in the aftermath of reports based on Peril of Milley’s contacts with China in the waning days of the Trump administration, seeking to reassure an uncertain adversary, Joe Biden came to the general’s defense.

As for Barr, for 20 months he bent the justice department to the president’s will. Fortunately, he refused in the end to break it. Overturning the election was a far greater ask than pouring dirt over the special counsel’s report on Trump and Russia or running interference for Paul Manafort, Trump’s convicted-then-pardoned campaign manager. Barr, it seems, wants back into the establishment – having smashed his fist in its eye.

Woodward and Costa recount Barr’s Senate confirmation hearing, in which he promised to allow Robert Mueller to complete the Russia investigation, Trump’s enraged reaction and an intervention by his wife, Melania. According to the author, Barr may have owed his job to her.

Emmett Flood, then counsel to Trump, conveyed to Barr his mood.

“The president’s going crazy,” he said. “You said nice things about Bob Mueller.”

Melania was having none of it, reportedly scolding her husband: “Are you crazy?”

In a vintagely Trumpian moment, she also said Barr was “right out of central casting”.

In another intriguing bit of pure political dish, Mitch McConnell is seen in the Senate cloakroom, joking at Trump’s expense.

“Do you know why [former secretary of state Rex] Tillerson was able to say he didn’t call the president a ‘moron’?” the Senate Republican leader asks.

“Because he called him a ‘fucking moron’.”

By contrast, McConnell has kind words for Biden – a man he is dedicated to rendering a one-term president. America’s cold civil war goes on. Some, sometimes, still send messages across no man’s land.

Woodward and Costa show Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, the goddess of alternative facts, reminding Trump that he turned voters off in his second election. In 2020, Trump underperformed among white voters without a college degree and ran behind congressional Republicans .

“Get back to basics,” Conway tells him. Stop with the grievances and obsessing over the election. From the looks of things, Trump has discounted her advice. Conway has a book of her own due out in 2022. Score-settling awaits.

Ending somewhere near the political present, Woodward and Costa shed light on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Senator Lindsey Graham with it.

In office, Trump affixed his signature to a document titled “Memorandum for the Acting Secretary of Defense: Withdrawal from Somalia and Afghanistan”. It declared: “I hereby direct you to withdraw all US forces from the Federal Republic of Somalia no later than 31 December 2020 and from the Islamic Republican of Afghanistan no later than 15 January 2021.”

Apparatchiks were baffled as to where the memo had come from. Then they blocked it. Trump folded when confronted.

As for Graham, the South Carolina Republican and presidential golfing buddy expresses “hate” for both Trump and Biden over Afghanistan.

Graham and Biden were friends once. As Graham has repeatedly trashed Hunter Biden, expect the fissure between him and the new president to prove to be long lasting. As for Graham and Trump, it’s a question of who needs whom more at any given moment. With John McCain gone, it’s a good bet Graham will latch on to an alpha dog again.

Fittingly, in their closing sentence, Woodward and Costa ponder the fate of the American experiment itself.

“Could Trump work his will again? Were there any limits to what he and his supporters might do to put him back in power?

“Peril remains.”

Peril is published by Simon & Schuster

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The Biggest Revelations in “Peril” Are Really About the Republican Party’s Future

By Amy Davidson Sorkin

Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, it was widely reported, met for lunch at Mar-a-Lago on January 28th, three weeks after a Trumpist mob stormed the Capitol, and a week after Joe Biden was sworn in as President. Have you wondered what they talked about? In “Peril,” Bob Woodward and Robert Costa have the answer for you. Trump asks:

“You want a cheeseburger and fries?”

“I’ll have a cheeseburger, but I’m fat,” McCarthy said. “No fries. Salad. Take the bun out.”

“That really works?” Trump asked, looking over at McCarthy’s plate. Trump took the bun off his own burger.

“You want some ice cream?”

“I’ll have some fruit.”

Trump ordered ice cream for himself.

Maybe there’s a grand metaphor here: there are times when Trump makes healthy choices and times when he doesn’t. Or, perhaps, for a planner of political lunches, the information that Trump still likes ice cream but may be losing his taste for hamburger buns counts as news you can use. But the function of the exchange, in the book, is different, and twofold. First, it stands, as do many slice-of-life vignettes in this and other books in the Woodward œuvre, as a legitimator of sourcing. Who but someone very close to the events would know about the bun? That is true of many other such moments in “ Peril ,” such as when Senator Ted Cruz “was at a steakhouse, in the middle of dinner, when the President called.” And when, before a meeting with Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr steeled himself “in the little dining room off the Oval Office.” Or when Kellyanne Conway called Trump at Walter Reed, where he was being treated for COVID -19, and said to him, “Enjoy your hospital food.” No word on whether they served ice cream.

The second function of those moments is to point to one of the major, if less-examined, themes of “Peril”: the cozy, woozy, familiar complacency of leading Republicans when it comes to Trump, which persists long past the point when his contempt for American democracy has become clear. During the steakhouse phone call, which took place in December, 2020, Cruz agrees to argue the President’s election-fraud case before the Supreme Court, if the Justices take it. (They don’t.) Barr had gone to the Oval Office to urge Trump to focus on his reëlection and to reconnect with the voters who loved him rather than become “a captive of the Beltway.” Conway was giving him strategic advice for the next time he ran.

On January 6th , after the rioters had finally been cleared from the Capitol, the members of the House and the Senate had returned to their chambers, and the tallying of Electoral College votes had resumed, McCarthy persisted in voting to reject the electors of Arizona and Pennsylvania. (So did Cruz.) A week after that, McCarthy said publicly that Trump bore some “responsibility” for the assault, but the visit to Mar-a-Lago seems to have been meant to walk back that statement, mild as it was. McCarthy went to Florida with the hope of keeping Trump involved with the House G.O.P. so he could retake the majority in 2022. And he tells Trump that he thinks impeachment isn’t “going anywhere.”

It may seem odd to say that complicity—rather than defiance—is the main message of “Peril,” because so much of the pre-publication attention has been paid to scenes involving General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which were highlighted in an excerpt published in the Washington Post . (Both Woodward and Costa work for the Post .) In short, on October 30, 2020, and again on January 8, 2021, Milley used an established communication channel to reassure his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, first that the United States was not about to launch a surprise military strike against China (“We are not going to attack.”) and then that the U.S. government was not on the verge of collapse (“Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”).

Also, Milley reminds everybody—especially the team that would launch a nuclear attack if Trump ordered it to do so—about all the procedures that are in place and that he, Milley, is in the loop if someone starts a war. Since he is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that only makes sense. Most of what Woodward and Costa describe Milley doing is just him performing his ordinary job in extraordinary circumstances. But the account has caused outrage in Republican circles. In part, that is because of a line in which—in the course of reminding Li that there has always been a public buildup of tensions between the countries before the sort of crisis that could lead to war—Milley tells him, “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” Taken out of context, it might sound as if Milley was saying that he’d give that heads-up even if the United States were legitimately engaged in some future war with China. In context, he’s clearly conveying to Li that military action would never be expected to come out of nowhere, as a political surprise.

Mostly, though, the Republicans’ anger is at the idea that Milley thought he had any business putting a brake on Trump; for them, “Peril” is a deep-state smoking gun. What’s interesting is that Milley is never really put to the test; we don’t know whether he would have said no to Trump or have truly stood up to him, since, as far as we know, Trump never tried to launch a strike. Perhaps, for that very reason, the book is an alarming reminder of the state of nuclear controls—a subject more fully explored in works such as Eric Schlosser’s “ Command and Control .” The decision to launch is, ultimately, left to bad Presidents as it is to good ones. Milley, or someone speaking for him, is up front about conveying that he believes Trump ended his Presidency in a state of “serious mental decline” and instability. One might ask what plateau of wisdom Trump declined from. (Trump, in a statement last week, said that, if the account in “Peril” is true, then “ ‘Dumbass’ General Mark Milley’ ” should be “tried for TREASON.” He added that he viewed Woodward and Costa as authors who “write fiction, not fact.”)

But many of the officials quoted in the book are not as willing to face up to the danger that Trump poses. They still see him as an asset—and one they imagine they can manage. Senator Lindsey Graham , of South Carolina, says, of the post-Presidential Trump, “I think he’s redeemable. I think he’s got magic and I think he’s got darkness. I’ve said that a thousand times.” Indeed, he has—many of those times are mentioned in “Peril.” But we are also subjected to what seem like acres of pages of Graham describing how crucial it is that he keeps palling around with Trump, who he still believes can and should be the electoral savior of the G.O.P. “Mr. President,” he says, “there’s just no way this party can grow without you. You are the leader of the Republicans.” That exchange comes on a day in May of this year when he and Trump are hitting the links at the Trump International, in West Palm Beach, with Gary Player, the “South African golfing great and winner of nine major tournaments.” There is a back-and-forth, which Woodward and Costa reproduce for us in some detail, about whether lions will eat the golfers at a course that Player is thinking of building in South Africa. (Only if the golfers get out of their Jeeps, Player assures them.)

“Peril” also quotes Graham as saying, absurdly, that “my job is to maintain what’s left of the John McCain wing of the Republican Party, the Ronald Reagan wing of the Republican Party, that believes that America is an indispensable leader.” The book, like Woodward’s two previous Trump volumes, “ Rage ” and “ Fear ,” is overweighted with Republicans claiming to be the adults in the room, largely, it seems, by virtue of their willingness to say “fuck” in the Oval Office. (One shortcoming in the classic Woodward approach is that it is susceptible to his sources recalling what they’d said, and how they believed others reacted, in a wishful rather than a realistic way; the sections in which Barr supposedly tells Trump hard truths—in paragraph after paragraph of uninterrupted monologue—reads as though a retrospective gloss has been applied.) In the two previous books, those adults seemed increasingly childish, and in this one they seem truly lost. The book sidelines the true Trumpists, such as Senator Tommy Tuberville and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene , but Trump himself, unfortunately, does not; he was on the phone with Tuberville on January 6th, and has promoted Greene as his champion. For once, in that respect, Woodward is not going to all the places where the power really is. (We do get Paul Ryan, the former Speaker of the House, watching the January 6th events on television, and crying. But he’s in exile.)

There’s a lot of interesting color on Vice-President Mike Pence’s agonizing over whether there is any way that he can unilaterally reject electors. Dan Quayle, the former Vice-President, of all people, firmly instructs him that there is not. A striking aspect of that episode is that, although Pence does stand up to Trump, he clearly wishes that he didn’t have to. One gets the sense that, had Pence been persuaded that he had a shred of cover, he would, indeed, have done what Trump wanted. The intent was not symbolic: “Peril” includes excerpts from a legal memo that the White House sent to Senator Mike Lee, of Utah, laying out steps for overturning the election, with Pence’s help. Lee is shocked; he had encouraged Trump to challenge the election in court, but hadn’t, somehow, thought it would all go so far.

One of the most disappointing aspects of “Peril” is its failure to provide a definitive (or even a clear) account of what exactly happened in the White House on January 6th. Woodward and Costa quote various political and military figures calling one another and asking what is going on and why the National Guard is taking so long to respond—“ ‘What the hell are you guys doing?’ a national-security official asks the acting Secretary of Defense’s chief of staff”—but there are no coherent answers to that question. The authors also seem as uninterested in the impeachment trial that resulted from it, Trump’s second, as McCarthy was during his lunch at Mar-a-Lago: it gets little more than a page in “Peril.” There is a lot about the new Biden Administration ’s legislative efforts and, by extension, Biden’s handling of Senator Joe Manchin , of West Virginia, and also a fairly useful look at Biden’s determination to leave Afghanistan .

In “Peril,” Graham presents himself as doing the country a favor by encouraging Trump, in the months after the election, to stop obsessing about being cheated, and to focus on regaining power: “Graham was like an addiction counselor, struggling to keep his patient from taking one more drink.” But who’s the addict here? In the weeks between the election and January 6th, Graham helped to stoke the notion that the election was crooked. Having seen the consequences of that, he and his colleagues are hungry for whatever Trump is willing to serve up for them. Too many of them want him back in the game, and not just from an elder-statesman-like distance. “You agree with me that you’ve got a chance to come back,” Graham says. “Let’s focus on that, Mr. President, the greatest comeback in American history is possible.” Fair warning. The problem isn’t just that Trump won’t listen to people like Graham. It’s that, when it counts, he will.

Read More About the Attack on the Capitol

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By Isaac Chotiner

By Susan B. Glasser

By David Remnick

Bob Woodward’s incendiary trilogy of Trump books will come to an end with ‘Peril’

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A year after the buzzy release of his book “Rage,” which contained incriminating evidence regarding former President Donald Trump’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, investigative journalist Bob Woodward is gearing up for his next bombshell publication.

Publishing giant Simon & Schuster announced Monday that the third and final installment in Woodward’s bestselling trilogy of Trump exposés is on its way. Out Sept. 21, “Peril” will explore the turbulent transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden amid a global health crisis.

Review: Woodward’s Trump exposé ‘Rage’ reflects the lazy thinking that got us into this mess

Woodward’s journalism helped bring down Richard Nixon. But “Rage” it too ploddingly neutral and enamored of access to make a dent in this fallen age.

Sept. 15, 2020

For his latest deep dive into modern White House history, Woodward has joined forces with fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa. The colleagues conducted more than 200 interviews with individuals at the heart of the intense presidential transition in preparation for their ambitious joint project, billed as a “spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink.”

According to Simon & Schuster, the forthcoming book is also “supplemented throughout with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential phone calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records.”

“Peril,” a detailed account spanning the final moments of the Trump presidency and the early months of the Biden administration, is the highly anticipated follow-up to Woodward’s previous Trump investigations, “Fear” and “Rage.”

Shortly before “Rage” hit shelves last year, audio surfaced of Woodward interviewing Trump for his book about the White House’s handling of the COVID-19 emergency.

Forget shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. 190,000 Americans are dead because of Trump

Audio from Trump’s interviews with Bob Woodward about COVID-19 reveal what he knew, and what he lied about.

Sept. 9, 2020

The watershed recording — in which Trump admitted to intentionally downplaying the dangers of the novel coronavirus — ignited a strong backlash , directed at both the former president and the journalist, who was accused of withholding key information to sell copies of his work.

In response to the criticism, Woodward told the Associated Press his primary goal was to finish and release “Rage” before the presidential election and after a thorough fact check — because “Trump says things that don’t check out, right?”

“That was the demarcation line for me,” he said in September. “Had I decided that my book was coming out on Christmas, the end of this year, that would have been unthinkable.”

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Table of Contents

• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

About the authors.

Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post , where he has worked for more than 50 years. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his Watergate coverage and the other for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored 21 bestselling books, 15 of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Robert Costa is the Chief Election and Campaign Correspondent for CBS News, where he has worked since 2022. He previously served as a national political reporter at  The Washington Post  and as moderator and managing editor of  Washington Week  on PBS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. He is from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.   

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (January 3, 2023)
• Length: 512 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982182922

Browse Related Books

• Political Science > Public Affairs & Administration
• Biography & Autobiography > Presidents & Heads of State
• Political Science > Government > Executive Branch

Raves and Reviews

“The thing that is so bracing and nerve-wracking and important about this new book is what it reveals about how much worse it was than we knew, how much closer we came to real disaster than we have known before now. ” — Rachel Maddow, MSNBC "The book details how Mr. Trump's presidency essentially collapsed in his final months in office, particularly after his election loss and the start of his campaign to deny the results." — Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times "We know that the period between the election and the inauguration was a time of great domestic turmoil. And what Peril does is it shows that this was also a grave national security crisis." — Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post “Explosive new details about former President Donald Trump's actions around last year's election and the January insurrection.” — PBS "Woodward and Costa got an exclusive transcript of the call. Pelosi has the same concerns that Milley does. The phone call is dramatic. It's blunt. And Pelosi wants Milley to reassure her that the nuclear weapons are safe." — Jamie Gangel, CNN "Excerpts of the Woodward/Costa book in The Washington Post and CNN make the Trump administration’s operations in January 2021 sound like a bewildering blend of King Lear, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, Dr. Strangelove and Veep." — Olivier Knox, The Washington Post

"A cliffhanger . . . Like an installment of a deathless Marvel franchise, for all its spectacle Peril ends with a dismaying sense of prologue." – John Williams , The New York Times

“The clear theme of Peril is not a rehash or account of what transpired over the past year or so. It is a waving red flag designed to warn the electorate and chattering class that this story is far from over.” —Mediaite "The explosive new book....that rocked Washington and the world with its headlines...you've done it again." —George Stephanopolous, ABC "An amazing, intense, and very troubling read . . . A book that is historical and also a caution - a warning about the future. . . It's a fantastic book." —Jake Tapper, CNN “A Bob Woodward book is like a large Christmas tree with dozens and dozens and dozens of unique ornaments that you've never seen before, news media headlines immediately focused on the biggest and most important ornaments on that tree, and we all eagerly read those first news reports about a Bob Woodward book. But the reason to read the book, the reason to order this book tonight or get it at your bookstore tomorrow is to see how the whole story fits together and see all of those ornaments on the tree that the news media never gets to because there are just too many of them.” —Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC "Extraordinary new book . . . chalk full of scoops . . . iconic pieces of reporting . . . A collaboration we have been waiting for. It lives up to all of our hopes and expectations. . . It is stunning." — Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC “Woodward and Costa make a powerful case that America has had a narrow escape. It leaves all Americans, in particular the Republican Party, with some thinking to do" —Justin Webb, The Times , UK

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• By Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
• Simon & Schuster
• Reviewed by Salley Shannon
• October 4, 2021

Things really were as bad as many of us suspected.

General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, comes close to being canonized in Peril , the latest listening-behind-the-curtains book by Bob Woodward, this time writing with fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa. All that’s lacking is a choir. 

In mid-September, as reporters saw advance copies of the book, there were headlines about the good general’s reassuring phone calls to his counterpart in China during the final months of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Apparently, that country’s intelligence service was convinced Trump shortly would be going for a full-on wag-the-dog scenario. Maybe to divert attention from that pesky covid-19? 

Next came the headlines about Milley lining up the members of the military who carry the nuclear “football,” extracting promises that they’d call him before initiating a launch sequence. He did the same thing with the heads of the military services. 

During any other administration, if it had become known that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs had done these things, there would’ve been an avalanche of editorials shouting “Overreach!” and “Fire him!” Indeed, there were a few of these. Overall, though, most of us seem to have read the news, reflected on who was in the White House at the time, and thought, “Well, that was very sensible of him.” And then, “I wonder if there’s any coffee left.”

Full disclosure: Painting Milley as our ranking Warrior Against Crazy initially raised my hackles. I’d seen him walk with Trump en route to that infamous Bible-waving in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church on June 1, 2020. If you cast your mind back to the time of the myriad Black Lives Matter protests across America, you’ll recall that the president had been threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and put active-duty troops in the streets.

That day on live TV, the world had just seen peaceful protestors driven out of Lafayette Square, which is across from the White House. Tear gas, rubber bullets. Even mounted Park Police charging the crowd on horseback.

Generals usually come to Capitol Hill and the White House all polished up, rows of medals over their hearts. That day, Milley wore camo. Battle dress. Secretary of State Mark Esper, a West Point graduate himself, walked next to him. For a few minutes — until Trump held up the Bible for an absurd photo op — I thought there had been a military takeover of Washington. 

The book notes that, as they walked, Esper said to Milley, “We’ve been duped. We’re being used.” Milley agreed, saying it was a political event and that he was peeling off. Seconds later, Milley was seen on his phone. Apparently, his wife was wondering the same thing I was.

Still, by another hundred pages into Peril , I was ready to light a few candles to Milley myself. “Mr. President,” said policy advisor Stephen Miller during a White House meeting, “they are burning America down. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, they’re burning it down. You have an insurrection on your hands. Barbarians at the gates.”

Milley’s instant reaction? “Shut the fuck up, Steve.”

He knew that Miller, perhaps the furthest right of Trump’s staff, had been egging on the president. Trump dearly wanted to go into savior mode.

Turning to Trump, Milley told him there are 276 American cities with populations over 100,000. That, in the last 24 hours, two of those cities had seen major protests, and a few others had seen 20 to a few hundred protestors turn violent. By far, the majority of the protests had been peaceful. He talked of systemic racism and letting off steam.

“They used spray paint, Mr. President. That’s not an insurrection,” Milley said. Esper and Attorney General William Barr agreed. Trump was silent. 

Another candle: Shortly after the election, Milley was handed a memo signed by Trump that ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Somalia by Dec. 31, 2020, and from Afghanistan no later than Jan. 15, 2021. There had been zero discussion about such important moves. The memo’s format looked fishy, but the signature appeared authentic.

Milley headed to the White House. “How did this happen?” he asked National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, who looked at the memo and said, “I have no idea.” Neither did Vice President Mike Pence’s lead security advisor know about it. The National Security Council and the White House Counsel’s office also hadn’t seen or heard of it. Pence’s advisor went to the president with the document in hand. Trump recognized the memo. He didn’t say whether he’d signed it or not, but he nullified it then and there.

Six months later, Axios learned that the memo had been drafted by Trump’s former body man (a staffer who accompanies a dignitary at all times, holding his coat, carrying extra contact lenses, etc.) and a retired Army colonel who was an advisor to the acting Secretary of Defense.

The second half of the book covers the election and early days of the Biden Administration. Peril doesn’t portray President Biden as Mr. Nice Guy. Instead, what we see is a man smarter and more politically wily than we may have given him credit for being.

It was always clear Biden wanted to end the 20-year Afghanistan war. He likened the generals who, early in President Obama’s first term, strong-armed the new commander-in-chief into sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, to a third grader at confession. The kid tells the priest he stole a gold chain but leaves out the part about there being a gold watch at the end of it. In every meeting, Biden looked for the watch.

In decades to come, what political and media junkies may most recall about Peril — aside from its disturbing details about Trump — is that it defines Costa as Woodward’s successor. So it’s unfortunate that, in the epilogue, Woodward, the most famous reporter of his generation, author of a string of bestsellers, and holder of two Pulitzers, goes on and on about how he “learned about politics” from his much younger co-author. Seriously?

Costa is at least as capable a reporter as Woodward was at 35. Readers don’t need the demeaning sales pitch. The book is proof of the pudding. 

Salley Shannon's writing has appeared in many national magazines and newspapers.

Support the Independent by purchasing this title via our affliate links: Amazon.com Or through Bookshop.org

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‘Fire Exit’ considers what it means to be an outsider looking in

Morgan Talty, the author of the award-winning “Night of the Living Rez,” returns to Maine’s Penobscot Reservation.

Charles Lamosway does not make a great first impression. In the opening pages of Morgan Talty’s debut novel, “ Fire Exit ,” the White narrator confesses to the creepy habit of sitting outside his home and watching a young woman who lives on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation.

“I was waiting, as I usually did,” Charles says. “Soon, across the river and on the reservation, my girl — a woman by that point — came out of the house and got in her car to go to work. I didn’t know how many times I’d been through this same routine, but that morning, something took hold of me. Something was different this time.”

The woman, it turns out, is his child, Elizabeth, fathered out of wedlock in 1991 with his ex-girlfriend, Mary, a member of the Penobscot Nation. Now, more than two decades after his daughter’s birth, as he watches Elizabeth go to work, Charles is stewing. He regrets how Mary, when pregnant with Elizabeth, dumped him and told him, “The baby can’t be yours.”

Over time, Charles figured out her reasoning: Mary wanted to lie and report that Elizabeth’s father was Native American, so that Elizabeth could earn tribal membership in the Penobscot Nation.

The problem is that all these years later, Charles, now in his 50s, suddenly wants to tell Elizabeth, 27, the truth. Will he get to reveal to his daughter that he’s more than just “a White man who had lived across from her all her life and watched her grow up from this side of the river”?

The book’s central tension, foregrounded by Maine’s fraught tribal history, plays out between two moral imperatives: one man’s wish to tell his biological daughter that he’s her father; and the desire of the daughter’s mother, who believes the disclosure might imperil the child’s status in the Penobscot Nation, not to mention her fragile health and state of mind.

Talty, an award-winning fiction writer and citizen of the Penobscot Nation, has the authority to tell such a story. His first book, “Night of the Living Rez,” was a collection of a dozen short stories that examined addiction, divorce and tragedy on the Penobscot Reservation. Published in 2022 , the work won several literary prizes and established Talty as a force who could write about Native American life with humor and solemnity.

What distinguishes “Fire Exit” the most is Talty’s choice of a White protagonist in a Native American community. Charles was raised on the Penobscot Reservation by his White mother and Native American stepfather, but his position as the novel’s narrator forces us to reckon with the degree to which he’s an outsider.

A sympathetic portrait of Charles coheres around the anguishing snippets of his backstory: when he was 13 in 1976, and he and his stepfather — armed with a gun — confronted the enraged father of a childhood friend; or, in 1990, when he was summarily cast off by a pregnant Mary, whom he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with; or, in 1991, around the time of Elizabeth’s birth, when he made a decision that might have enabled his stepfather’s death.

“Fire Exit,” though, struggles to achieve propulsion, partly because Charles constantly flits among different decades and presents these intriguing histories without clear time stamps. At various points, I was doing math in the margins to figure out which decade or year Charles was reminiscing about.

A more significant problem is that the sequence of events and the story’s symbolic devices rely too heavily on a surfeit of coincidences and heavy-handed parallels.

Charles, for instance, does not know his biological father, just like Elizabeth does not know hers. When Charles’s beloved stepfather dies on a hunting trip, he happens to perish in the same window of time as Elizabeth’s birth. And when, years later, Charles wants to know whether his ailing mother is eligible for a burial spot on the reservation with her husband, he travels to the chief’s office. There, for the first time in nearly 2½ decades, he just so happens to see Mary, who just so happens to be the office clerk to field his query.

The encounter with Mary is pivotal. He finds the courage to ask about their daughter, and Mary says Elizabeth “could be better, but she’ll be OK.” The fairly vague description leads him to speculate that Elizabeth suffers “in the same way my mother had all her life,” a reference to mental health issues that a doctor implies could be inherited. The coincidences don’t stop. There’s one involving the aforementioned firearm, another with his late stepfather’s home, another with a stuffed elephant doll.

My biggest issue, though, lies with Charles’s motivation. He’s desperate to tell Elizabeth that he’s her father. But he also claims to the reader, with little credibility, that he doesn’t hope she’d love him or that they’d be “brought together.”

“All I wanted was that she know the history that was hers, that this history wasn’t lost or wasted because of the illusion we’d tried to live in so neatly, that there was a life she could have lived and been a part of, and that she know she was as much a part of me as she was not. That’s the truth, the absolute truth.”

Talty is a beautiful craftsman. But I kept feeling like his narrator was withholding his own absolute truths. Or, at the very least, Charles wasn’t fully leveling with readers who might easily suspect that his ulterior (and understandable) aim was to gain a relationship with his grown daughter, who’d been raised by another man. He never quite convinced me that he wanted to inform Elizabeth merely so that she could understand his side of the family tree or that — cringe — “she should know her body was special.”

In the end, I wasn’t rooting for what Charles sought so badly. But I was cheering on Elizabeth, and maybe this is Talty’s true achievement. His narrator made me care most about his story’s most vulnerable person.

Ian Shapira is a staff writer at The Washington Post.

By Morgan Talty

Tin House. 256 pp. $28.95

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When the Culture Wars Came for the Theater

A new book sees the reactionary response to a New Deal–era arts initiative as a precursor to today’s cultural divisions.

From our current vantage point it may be hard to believe this, but during the worst economic crisis the United States has ever seen, the government decided to spend more than half a billion of today’s dollars to support the arts. Federal Project Number One, an offshoot of the Works Progress Administration, was a New Deal program that employed artists to make meaningful work all over the nation. One of its initiatives, the small but mighty Federal Theatre Project, accomplished something remarkable: From 1935 to 1939, it created a truly national theater with a distinctly American character, and revitalized an industry that was losing a war with the movies for both audience numbers and cultural impact. Unlike the state theaters of continental Europe, which were largely based in capital cities and set an artistic standard for their country, the FTP opened shows simultaneously across the nation, with scripts lightly tailored to their region, making theater relevant to everyone.

The Federal Theatre Project is best remembered for launching the career of Orson Welles, inventing a new documentary-theater form called the Living Newspaper , and investing in Black art through its Negro Units—as well as for its ignominious downfall. In 1939, Representative Martin Dies and the House Un-American Activities Committee accused the program of being a Communist front and of producing New Deal propaganda. These accusations were difficult for the FTP and its director, Hallie Flanagan, to fight, both because the project lacked public support from the WPA and because some of the claims were at least partly true. Only four years after its launch, the FTP’s budget was eliminated by Congress, and it shut down.

Theater folk love a romantic lost cause, as anyone who has seen Les Misérables can attest, so it’s hard to spend time in the industry and not become enamored of the FTP. The latest to do so is the renowned scholar James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America and the brilliant The Year of Lear . His new book, The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War , documents the rise of both the Federal Theatre Project and its antagonist Martin Dies, along with the death of the former at the hands of the latter.  Shapiro sees this collision of American art, the federal government, and the reactionary right as a precursor to and source of our present culture wars, in which Communist has been replaced with woke and certain right-wingers seek to use the power of the state to control the books we read and the culture we produce. While these two eras have things in common, the search for parallels puts a presentist filter over the story of the FTP that is ultimately the book's undoing.

Throughout, Shapiro depicts the history of the FTP as a battle between titanic, eternal forces. In one corner is Dies, portrayed as the Reactionary With a Thousand Faces, the man who “begat Senator Joseph McCarthy, who begat Roy Cohn, who begat Donald Trump, who begat the horned ‘QAnon Shaman.’” Fighting against these forces are the Federal Theater Project and Flanagan. Together, they represent the noble art of theater, which has “always been about social conflict and questioning the status quo.” This clash “would have a lasting impact on American cultural life, and, inevitably, on the resilience of the nation’s democracy,” Shapiro asserts, “for the health of democracy and theater, twin-born in Ancient Greece, has always been mutually dependent.”

Although theater was born at roughly the same time and place as democracy, Shapiro is mistaking correlation for causation. It’s particularly odd for a Shakespeare scholar of Shapiro’s immense gifts and knowledge to assert that democracy and theater go hand in hand. Shakespeare and his brilliant colleagues in London’s theater scene lived and worked during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. Both of these rulers were many things, but enthusiasts for democracy they were not. Playwrights of this era wrote under an official censorship regime, and one of the early traveling companies during Elizabeth’s reign was run by her spymaster. The model of tragedy they worked from was based on the works of the Roman writer and stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, who was the tutor, and later adviser, of Emperor Nero. Some of Russia’s greatest dramatists wrote within an even more extreme censorship system under the czars. America’s own theatrical golden age, which began in the late 1940s, did take place during a time of progressive democratic gains, but it was also a period when Jim Crow laws and white-supremacist terrorism effectively shut Black Americans out of democratic participation in large swaths of the country.

Read: The man who transformed American theater

Dissident art creates a vital outlet for the democratic spirit, but when it comes to the mainstream, the arts’ most durable relationship is not with democracy but with nationalism. Theater has long been a way for societies to declare their greatness and define their national character; investment in theater has often coincided with countries’ emergence onto the world stage. Domestic theater grew dramatically in sophistication and popularity in Russia after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, in England under Elizabeth I, in Spain during the rise of its empire in the 16th century, and in the United States after it became one of the world’s two superpowers at the end of World War II. When federal arts funding was resurrected in the U.S. more than a decade after the FTP’s death, it was in part so that artistic work could showcase the superiority of America to the Soviet Union.

This funding took two forms, one covert and one official. As the journalist and historian Frances Stonor Saunders documented in The Cultural Cold War , the CIA secretly steered funding and career opportunities to American artists and writers via various front groups, such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. These groups sponsored musical events, including concerts presenting orchestral works that had been censored in Eastern Europe and tours featuring Louis Armstrong. In the literary world, it supported The Paris Review (co-founded by the CIA employee Peter Matthiessen); influenced PEN International, the literary free-speech organization, to pursue American interests; and had a hand in the publishing of at least a thousand books. The Congress for Cultural Freedom also helped the Museum of Modern Art mount multiple shows of abstract expressionists and New York School painters in Europe. Ironically, these same artists were simultaneously being denounced in the Capitol. The iconoclasm that made them such great representatives of America’s individualist genius also made them dangerous nonconformists and suspected Communists.

More overtly, in the 1960s Congress created the National Endowment for the Arts. Its founding legislation is explicitly nationalistic in tone. “The world leadership which has come to the United States,” Congress declared , “cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation's high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.” Partly as a way of differentiating the NEA from the Soviet model, the endowment established a peer-review panel for selecting grantees that was meant to shield recipients from political interference.

This system of independence lasted until the early 1990s, when modern heirs to Martin Dies, such as Senator Jesse Helms, worked to break the NEA’s spine, killing its most innovative programs, doing away with almost all of its grants to individual artists, drastically cutting its funding, and inserting decency language into its funding guidelines. (The peer-review system is still in place today, but it no longer supports individual artists other than writers and translators, and as Michael Brenson writes in his book Visionaries and Outcasts , the work the NEA backs now is far more conservative and populist than what came before.) It’s not a coincidence that the crushing of the endowment occurred immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union; with its major rival vanquished, the U.S. government didn’t need the arts to advertise the greatness of the American way of life anymore. Lacking a nationalistic purpose, many arts advocates have struggled to make a compelling case for arts funding.

One argument frequently floated is that the arts are fundamentally virtuous, and make us better people. There are many versions of this claim, from music assisting with the development of math skills, to fiction's ability to expand our empathy, to Shapiro's assertion that theater is good for democracy. The arts can aid in enriching our democracy; they can make us more alive, more human, less lonely, and wiser. But they will never do so if we simply assume that they’re good for us by the mere fact of their existence. The arts deserve appreciation and funding even when they may not be good for us. Art is where we go to express the fullness of ourselves, including the parts that are broken, and to bear witness to the fullness of the other. Art reflects the dreamworld of the self, and our dreams are not always virtuous, nor are they under our control. But it is precisely this complexity that makes the arts necessary.

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

In reducing the Federal Theatre Project’s story to a parable for the present day, The Playbook misses an opportunity to mine that complexity. The FTP produced more than a thousand shows, ranging from boulevard comedy to experimental dance. It operated all over the country and employed hundreds of people. Yet The Playbook focuses only on a small handful of shows in chapters that fail to connect to one another, or give the overarching story of the FTP its due. The resulting book is a number of exegeses of specific productions bookended by a couple of chapters about the House Un-American Activities Committee, rather than a coherent story. Some of the specific productions Shapiro chooses to highlight—which include an all-white dance performance set to Black protest music and a satire on racism by two Black men that the FTP insisted be rewritten so as not to offend white viewers—also make a poor case for theater as a bastion of democracy.

The primary purpose of history is not to find lessons for our time, but to understand the past. Sifting through the complex record of the Federal Theatre Project and the Dies Committee to find contemporary resonance risks covering up as much as is reveals. What makes Hallie Flanagan’s stewardship of the FTP so inspiring is that she never took the virtue or relevance of theater for granted. Flanagan and her colleagues made theater an important expression of the American democratic experiment through force of will, passion, and ingenuity. And although, yes, that experiment was destroyed through a mix of reactionary perfidy and liberal wimpiness, the meaning of its story is not solely contained in its ending. The life of the Federal Theatre Project—filled, as the democratic project itself is, with triumphs and failures, arguments and coalitions, power, rage, love, and pain—is suffused with complicated, contradictory meaning, all on its own.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Book review: ‘the manicurist’s daughter’ by susan lieu.

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The Manicurist's Daughter

Susan Lieu's recent memoir, The Manicurist's Daughter , is a powerful exploration of her own journey of losing her mother to a botched cosmetic surgery when she was a child, and discovering herself and her family through the decades-long grieving process. The book not only delves into Lieu's personal experiences but also shines an important spotlight on the second-generation Vietnamese-American experience, highlighting the nuances of finding belonging across two very different cultures.

While her story is unique, it carries with it strong ties to a universal experience of immigrants. By sharing her experience so openly, Lieu hopes those commonalities will help readers feel more compassion towards their elders and themselves.

“There are definitely nuances in my family's immigration journey, but the main throughline is that we're all children of immigrants,” Lieu told me. “There's the intense financial pressure to save money, always be productive, and make choices not only in the interest of your nuclear family, but your extended family who are in great need of remittances and getting sponsored over. There's a deep love for Costco deals, the ominous power of our ancestors, the almost dictatorial parenting style to keep the ship afloat, and this intense longing to fit in among our peers. The undercurrent of our existence is this push-pull dance of assimilation, all while swimming in the unspoken PTSD the family carried over.”

Lieu’s mother, a vibrant entrepreneur and refugee, embraced the American dream by founding nail salons that not only served as economic lifelines but also as cultural sanctuaries. But her ingrained desire to adhere to both Vietnamese and western beauty ideals had fatal consequences. In exploring this, Lieu explores the ways in which those same cultural ideals influenced her own body image.

Directly tied to this physical self-perception, food plays an important role throughout Lieu's memoir, serving as a thread that connects her to her heritage and to her mother. The Vietnamese meals that Susan intricately describes through the book are more than just nourishment; they are rituals of memory and belonging, and they hold both comfort and guilt at different points throughout her life.

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As Lieu navigates the complexities of her cultural identity and the profound impact of her mother's death, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and healing that grows into something bigger than herself. It becomes a communal story of resilience and the evolving nature of identity. By sharing her story, Lieu not only breaks her family's silence but also paves the way for others to acknowledge and voice their struggles.

“I hope readers can see that their feelings were and still are valid. And by doing their own internal healing work, I hope readers know that they are taking the first step in bringing healing to their family and for the next generation,” Lieu shared.

In publishing her book, Lieu felt it was important that it reach the people who could most identify with her story and feel seen in her journey. To ensure this, she started the Intergenerational Healing Book Fund , where the community helped fundraise $52,000 to distribute 1,640 books to fifteen nonprofits in America serving children of immigrants. She shared on the fund page, “I believe healing from intergenerational trauma happens first on an individual level, and reading is an intimate experience to help unpack complicated feelings on family and the immigrant experience.”

The Manicurist’s Daughter does more than tell the story of a tragedy; it opens up a space for dialogue about the complex identities of second-generation immigrants. Lieu's memoir serves as an important reminder of the power of authentic storytelling.

The creative process has been cathartic and freeing for Lieu. “It feels like a sweet dream I am finally getting to enjoy,” she told me, recounting the letters she gets from readers around the world who have shared how much her work impacted them.

In capturing her own search for identity and closure, Lieu offers hope, solidarity and empathy to generations of readers. Her story is a testament to the power of speaking out, which not only helps in personal healing but also creates shared narratives that strengthen entire communities.

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Table of Contents

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About The Book

About the authors.

Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post , where he has worked for more than 50 years. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his Watergate coverage and the other for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored 21 bestselling books, 15 of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Robert Costa is the Chief Election and Campaign Correspondent for CBS News, where he has worked since 2022. He previously served as a national political reporter at  The Washington Post  and as moderator and managing editor of  Washington Week  on PBS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. He is from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.   

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (January 3, 2023)
• Length: 512 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982182922

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Raves and Reviews

“The thing that is so bracing and nerve-wracking and important about this new book is what it reveals about how much worse it was than we knew, how much closer we came to real disaster than we have known before now. ” — Rachel Maddow, MSNBC "The book details how Mr. Trump's presidency essentially collapsed in his final months in office, particularly after his election loss and the start of his campaign to deny the results." — Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times "We know that the period between the election and the inauguration was a time of great domestic turmoil. And what Peril does is it shows that this was also a grave national security crisis." — Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post “Explosive new details about former President Donald Trump's actions around last year's election and the January insurrection.” — PBS "Woodward and Costa got an exclusive transcript of the call. Pelosi has the same concerns that Milley does. The phone call is dramatic. It's blunt. And Pelosi wants Milley to reassure her that the nuclear weapons are safe." — Jamie Gangel, CNN "Excerpts of the Woodward/Costa book in The Washington Post and CNN make the Trump administration’s operations in January 2021 sound like a bewildering blend of King Lear, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, Dr. Strangelove and Veep." — Olivier Knox, The Washington Post

"A cliffhanger . . . Like an installment of a deathless Marvel franchise, for all its spectacle Peril ends with a dismaying sense of prologue." – John Williams , The New York Times

“The clear theme of Peril is not a rehash or account of what transpired over the past year or so. It is a waving red flag designed to warn the electorate and chattering class that this story is far from over.” —Mediaite "The explosive new book....that rocked Washington and the world with its headlines...you've done it again." —George Stephanopolous, ABC "An amazing, intense, and very troubling read . . . A book that is historical and also a caution - a warning about the future. . . It's a fantastic book." —Jake Tapper, CNN “A Bob Woodward book is like a large Christmas tree with dozens and dozens and dozens of unique ornaments that you've never seen before, news media headlines immediately focused on the biggest and most important ornaments on that tree, and we all eagerly read those first news reports about a Bob Woodward book. But the reason to read the book, the reason to order this book tonight or get it at your bookstore tomorrow is to see how the whole story fits together and see all of those ornaments on the tree that the news media never gets to because there are just too many of them.” —Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC "Extraordinary new book . . . chalk full of scoops . . . iconic pieces of reporting . . . A collaboration we have been waiting for. It lives up to all of our hopes and expectations. . . It is stunning." — Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC “Woodward and Costa make a powerful case that America has had a narrow escape. It leaves all Americans, in particular the Republican Party, with some thinking to do" —Justin Webb, The Times , UK

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The Author Started as a Skeptic. He Came Out a Believer in Pure Evil.

“The Devil’s Best Trick,” Randall Sullivan’s in-depth occult investigation, is not for the easily frightened.

By Clancy Martin

Clancy Martin’s most recent book is “How Not to Kill Yourself.”

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THE DEVIL’S BEST TRICK: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, by Randall Sullivan

When I was 12 years old, my family went on vacation and, at my request, left me behind. My mother told me that I could sleep in her and my stepdad’s bedroom — normally strictly off limits to kids — and watch their TV. The first night they were away, I made a horrifying mistake: “The Exorcist” was debuting on Canadian television. It came on around sunset. I turned on the TV and climbed into my parents’ bed. You know what happened next.

I wanted to go turn off the TV, but I didn’t dare for fear of what might be waiting in the darkness. I tried hiding under the covers but that only made it worse. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I do know that every time I closed my eyes I could see the ravaged, green, grinning face of Linda Blair. As Randall Sullivan would say, the face of evil.

The Devil’s greatest trick, as the saying goes (attributed sometimes to Baudelaire and other times to “The Usual Suspects”), was to convince the world he doesn’t exist. Sullivan, an investigative journalist, goes out looking for him in our modern world. And “The Devil’s Best Trick” is a master class in the difficult art of first-person, narrative nonfiction.

At the start of his journey, Sullivan’s not sure if he believes in the Devil; by the end he is certain that Satan is real. Sullivan is never showy, and doesn’t insert himself into the story more than necessary, but we always feel he is there with us — which is often comforting and necessary, given his sinister subject.

The prose has wonderful momentum even when he’s writing about arcane debates in the early Christian church. Each chapter is a turn, a surprise. The writing is never clichéd, nor is the thinking. Sullivan knows a great lede, and he’s just as good with cliffhangers.

He tells us that he cut quite a bit of the murder and torture material, but parents should still skip Chapters 9 and 10. When he says, of the serial murderer Westley Allan Dodd, “I’m not going to describe the things Dodd did next; they’re too horrible,” we are grateful; what he has included is very difficult to read.

One of the things that help make Sullivan a believer in the Devil is, ironically, Dodd’s ultimate relationship with the divine. That such a profoundly tormented — and, well, purely malevolent — personality could come to seem like a forgivable human being makes Sullivan wonder if there had indeed been a battle for Dodd’s soul between God and Satan. Certainly this is what his chaplain believed, saying, of the night of Dodd’s execution: “I can tell you that if Westley Allan Dodd had stood at the microphone that night, he would have said something about grace and mercy and forgiveness that would have brought 70,000 people to their feet. Because he knew whereof he spoke.” This causes Sullivan to wonder if there might be a place where the Devil is not conceptual, “but an actual being from whom one might either flee or seek favors.”

Where Sullivan really hits his stride is in his encounters with the purportedly possessed. We meet a Franciscan priest who, as a trained psychologist, considered exorcism an outmoded superstition — until participating in one. Sullivan describes an exorcism of a young woman he himself witnesses in Medjugorje, a pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the last third of the book, Sullivan travels to Mexico. We learn about the human sacrifice and cannibalism of the Aztecs; the complexities and revisionist history of the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes; the 21st-century collaboration between drug lords, kidnapping rings and the cultlike religious following, numbering in the millions, o f Santa Muerte (or Saint Death) . We watch as two goats are sacrificed to El Diablo.

The final chapter details one of the most famous exorcisms in American history, and unless you simply refuse to believe multiple eyewitnesses — if you are the sort of skeptic who feels that mass delusion is more plausible than the possibility of powers normally unseen — you will leave strongly inclined to agree with the author that evil is literally real.

I have had experiences in my life that most people might describe as “supernatural.” And though, unlike Sullivan, I do not believe in Satan, I think there are indeed all kinds of phenomena unexplained by contemporary science — which is, after all, still in its infancy. What is more, I tend to believe that people like Randall Sullivan are intellectually responsible and acting in good faith; we should at least open our minds to the possibility that they may know something we do not.

This book will doubtless be made into a television show, and this is the rare case where that’s good. I wouldn’t watch it; just reviewing the book has me petrified. Reading it, I was once again 12 and alone in the house.

THE DEVIL’S BEST TRICK : How the Face of Evil Disappeared | By Randall Sullivan | Atlantic Monthly | 333 pp. | $25.99

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Peril Kindle Edition

• Print length 506 pages
• Language English
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• Publisher Simon & Schuster
• Publication date September 21, 2021
• File size 51533 KB
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B098PDDZW3
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster (September 21, 2021)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 21, 2021
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 51533 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 506 pages
• #5 in Public Affairs & Administration (Kindle Store)
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• #73 in Federal Government

About the authors

Bob woodward.

Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1973 for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second in 2003 as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He has authored or coauthored 18 books, all of which have been national non-fiction bestsellers. Twelve of those have been #1 national bestsellers. He has written books on eight of the most recent presidents, from Nixon to Obama.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News has said, “Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time.”

In 2014, Robert Gates, former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, said that he wished he’d recruited Woodward into the CIA, saying of Woodward, “He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him...his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn’t be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique.”

Gene Roberts, the former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the Woodward-Bernstein Watergate coverage, “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.” In listing the all-time 100 best non-fiction books, Time Magazine has called All the President’s Men, by Bernstein and Woodward, “Perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.”

In 2018 David Von Drehle wrote, “What [Theodore] White did for presidential campaigns, Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward has done for multiple West Wing administrations – in addition to the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Federal Reserve.”

Woodward was born March 26, 1943 in Illinois. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and served five years as a communications officer in the United States Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining the Post.

Photos, a Q&A, and additional materials are available at Woodward's website, www.bobwoodward.com.

Robert Costa

Robert Costa is the Chief Election and Campaign Correspondent for CBS News, where he has worked since 2022. He previously served as a national political reporter at The Washington Post and as moderator and managing editor of Washington Week on PBS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. He is from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

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