As I write, America is preparing to inaugurate Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Strangely, even though he spent months campaigning for office, making countless public appearances and appearing in TV debates watched by huge audiences, it seems we still know very little about what kind of President he will be. According to one report , during the election supporters, “took him seriously but not literally” while opponents “took him literally but not seriously”.
Unlike any of his predecessors he’s never previously held elected office, so he has no track record for observers to look to for clues, leaving them to mull over his often unclear and contradictory utterances on matters such as nuclear weapons.
So what makes Donald J Trump tick? Switch on the TV, tune in the radio or take a look around the internet and you’ll be met by an overwhelming amount of information and opinion about the man.
But what has he said himself? For that surely a good place turn is the books he has written. With no chance of a slip of the tongue in front of a microphone or of our words being misquoted, our written words are usually a better guide to what we really think about a subject.
According to Amazon, President Trump has authored more than fifteen best-sellers. Only a few, such as `Time to Get Tough: Make America Great Again (2015) and `The America We Deserve’ (2000) have very much to do with politics.
As you’d expect from someone who has spent the majority of his life successfully making lots of money, most of them suggest a man with a very single-minded approach to business.
Presumably staff at the White House have already made sure the library contains copies of these books, volumes with titles like `Think Like a Champion’, `Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success’, `The Art of the Deal’ and `Think Like a Billionaire.’ If not, I’d suggest they rectify that pretty quickly on the off-chance the new boss wants to show guests around.
My favourite title has to be `Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life’, but one book that stands out from all this hard-nosed look at life is `The Best Golf Advice I Ever Received’.
As well as suggesting that the new President make take to the golf course when he is in need of some downtime, it hopefully means that he’s not unfamiliar with the idea of abiding by a well-established set of rules…
There's a book for that 