Donald. Storia molto più che leggendaria di un Golden Man

For most of us, life feels like an endless, uncontrollable sequence of sliding doors. For a rare few, however, posterity speaks of destiny. And to recount the life of this outsized, excessive, destined protagonist, Stefano Massini starts from the very beginning: a family of German origins, a neatly trimmed lawn lined by a pristine driveway, a house nestled in the idyllic quiet of Queens. We gently open the front door, glimpse the Bible on display in the dining room, catch our reflection in the freshly polished glass, and witness the preparations for a party – the celebration of the birth of Donald J. Trump.
To dissolve legend in humor and sabotage mythology with sarcasm, Massini’s spellbinding prose zooms in on the tiniest of details, knotting them into the trajectory of a life teeming with
characters: the parents, the school principal, the chauffeur, the Golden Wife. And then the lawyer – the first to sense Donald’s potential, to catch a whiff of his peculiar aura. The one who
teaches him disillusionment and opportunism. Who propels him toward success, to the conquest of New York, to the tallest tower of all, bearing his name.
Meanwhile, history marches on: the fiery speeches of Malcolm X, Lee Harvey Oswald stepping out with a rifle, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali floating like a butterfly, and across the ocean, the explosion of a nuclear power plant. But as all this unfolds, our eyes remain fixed on the adventures of that sunburned boy with blond hair, who swiftly becomes a man, calls himself the Golden Boy, charms women, and defies rules and authority alike. We touch the grass of the baseball fields where he plays, watch him wear his first suit, slide behind the wheel of a Cadillac, and follow him on his triumphant ascent in the real estate world… Until the final grand idea takes shape: politics as an exit strategy. From financial ruin, from obsolescence, from old age – perhaps even from death.
With this book, Stefano Massini has written a chanson de geste for a shadowy, elusive figure who turns lying into an art and success into an obsession. Here is the story of the ten crucial minutes and the strange twists of fate that turned Donald J. Trump into the antihero of the last century – and the looming dread of the one just begun.