Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is an excellent and important book. As anyone familiar with the Washington Post already knows, Glenn Kessler and his fact-checking team have been documenting all of Donald Trump's false statements since the first day of his presidency. It is a formidable task, one that was originally intended for his first 100 days, but which readers implored them to continue; fortunately, they did. By the end of his third year, they had documented over 16,000 "false or misleading statements" from this president, designating each with 1-4 "Pinocchios", for degrees of misleading statements vs. outright lies. There has never been an American president with Donald Trump's record of deception. It was a feature of his "salesmanship" as the head of his father-originated business, the Trump Organization. It was such a hallmark of his political campaign that in 2015, Politifact.com couldn't narrow down a "Lie of the Year" and finally gave Trump the "award" for having made far more false statements than anyone else in the first year of his campaign. It is a public service to have a record of Trump's falsehoods, and not an easy task to organize and explain them. What I especially liked about this book was that each of the misleading statements--or outright lies--is accompanied by an explanation of the truth, often with much-needed background information. It is well written, well organized, easy to read creates and an important record for Americans to have, especially in an election year. The authors don't say it, but how can people have a president whose every statement is completely unreliable? There are, of course, times when even President Trump is stating a fact, telling the truth. But when someone averages 20 false public statements A DAY how is it possible for the public to research everything he says, to know when he might actually not be lying? During the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson's lying about America's successes created something called the "credibility gap". Trump's extensive--and routine--lying simply dwarfs anything from Johnson--or any other U.S. president. Until now, the sheer volume of Trump's weekly...daily....lying has actually worked FOR him. Because, as this book shows, he lies so often and about so many -different- things--shamelessly repeating them after being fact-checked--that the press--particularly the broadcast media--simply doesn't keep up. While all news programs -should- have a daily feature on the president's lies--and keep a running visual list that viewers could follow, refreshing their memories of the pattern of lying and the truly shocking extent of them--they don't. (CNN at least has a fact-checker, Daniel Dale, but it's his twitter account and periodic articles on CNN.com that do the most help. When it comes to broadcast time, he appears periodically, but is generally given short-shrift, rather than being a regular feature.) The failures of broadcast media to regularly and systematically fact-check Trump makes this book all the more crucial for people to read. The organization of "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth" should be commended for being thematic rather than chronological. There are sections dealing with his lies about himself, lies about others, lies about policies, and so on. Much is made, of course, about the tweets, a major source of falsehoods and one that he has turned into a highly effective propaganda tool. This book pierces through those propaganda efforts--many of them, as we have seen, being lies that are very dangerous to democracy. All citizens--whether supporters or critics of Donald Trump--should read this book. (Trump's supporters, in particular, should read it and seriously consider the quality of leader that they are supporting--and the lies he often tells them, as well, particularly at his rallies.) This is an excellent book, highly recommended. However, I have one critical note--very critical--about the Kindle edition. I ordered it first, and returned it and ordered the paperback instead. It is well formatted in the sense that the text is appropriately laid out--with the falsehoods being discussed formatted in indented, bolded paragraphs--very easy to see and read. HOWEVER, it has no Table of Contents!!! It has no navigation!!!!! You cannot move from one part of the book to another by linked chapters!!! And while it says you can highlight, as with any Kindle book, you actually can't. Highlight away, and the next time you open it, all your highlights are gone. For lack of navigation options and for lack of a Table of Contents, seriously, I would have given the Kindle edition "1 star". But I didn't want to penalize the authors' hard work for having a lousy publisher. Seriously, I hope they will fix this--or, if they can't, make the book free. One doesn't buy a Kindle book to be unable to comfortably read and navigate through it, particularly with non-fiction. So, my review stands for the paperback--for the writing, research and organization that went into it and its overall value to any reader. It is not for the Kindle edition, whose lack of the above-mentioned formatting made it actually unreadable for me .