Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award 2024
** THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * LONGLISTED FOR THE FT AND SHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 * A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2024 **
Inheritance. Fraud. Deceit. Drawing on decades' worth of confidential tax information, business records and insider interviews, Lucky Loser is an explosive investigation into the reality behind Trump’s wealth.
'Meticulously documented ... This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes' Washington Post
'Scalpel-like ... Damning' Sunday Times
'A first-rate financial thriller ... deserves, even demands, to be read' New York Times
Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump declared life has ‘not been easy for me’. He spun a fable of how he turned a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar empire, and argued this made him singularly qualified to lead the country.
Except none of it was true.
Born to a rich father, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today.
The story of Trump’s finances is one of rises and falls, of squandering fortunes on money-losing businesses to be saved by blind luck. He tacks his name to buildings while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits. He tarnishes the value of the Trump name by allowing anyone with a big enough cheque to use it. He makes side deals to cut out the television producer who not only rescued him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business guru – the image that carries him to the White House.
Here, for the first time, in a meticulous masterpiece of narrative reporting filled with scoops, is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money - what he had, what he lost, and what he has left - and the final word on the myth of Trump, the self-made millionaire.
*New York Times bestseller list, 6 Oct 24.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781847928238
Number of pages: 528
Weight: 791 g
Dimensions: 241 x 161 x 45 mm
A first-rate financial thriller ... one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read ... A multi-generational saga - New York Times
Meticulously documented ... Buettner and Craig have such a trove of documents, they are able to prove, in incontrovertible detail, the reality under the hype that is Donald Trump ... This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes - Washington Post
Shows that the popular caricature of Trump as a canny real estate titan - one painstakingly crafted by him, and by television producers - is more fact than fiction. ... With scalpel-like precision, [Buettner and Craig] paint a detailed portrait of just how much Trump was given to set him up for success in business, and the hundreds of millions of his father's money he squandered on bad deals ... Damning - Sunday Times
A page-turner ... Buettner and Craig delve more deeply into this story than anyone I've encountered - Guardian
Groundbreaking reporting ... comprehensive, persuasive, and packed with damning anecdotes - The New Yorker
Strikes at the heart of the Trump myth - Financial Times
I can’t emphasise this enough: Lucky Loser is a gripping, page-turning read, devastating in its meticulousness and thrilling in its narrative. If the devil is in the detail, this book is as close to Satan’s origin story as we’re ever going to get - Emma Brockes, Guardian
Buettner and Craig are relentless in picking apart every Trump misstatement … the pattern becomes clear … Lucky Loser shows us that Trump’s self-invention was largely based on lies - Literary Review
An expansive account of the New York Times reporters’ award-winning investigation into Trump’s finances - Financial Times, Books of the Year*
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?
