The Room Where It Happened

A White House Memoir

De: John Bolton

Narrado por: Robert Petkoff

JOHN BOLTON READS THE EPILOGUE!

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.

The result is a “scathing and revelatory” (The New Yorker) White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping its prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.

He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place.

Bolton’s “first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official” (The New York Times) starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.”

The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"John Bolton's tell-all audiobook on Donald Trump's presidency is one of the most scathing rebukes to have come from a former member of Trump's staff. Doubtless, his behind-the-scenes revelations would be powerful enough to cripple any politician in the pre-Trump era. In the authoritative and comforting tones of a news anchor, Robert Petkoff narrates the countless inadequacies of Trump and the yes-men that surround him, along with the author's eventual conclusion that Trump is unfit for the job. Petkoff's seamless delivery of the 20-hour audiobook is a perfect listening companion. . . . As astounding as the numerous accounts of Trump's ineptitude, arrogance, and poor judgment is the backstabbing intrigue that permeates the White House."

A telling book!

John Bolton’s book is an insiders guide to the chaos that happens almost daily in Trump’s White House. Plus it shows Trump’s inadequacies of asking questions that at the time indicates how fragile Trump’s cognitive abilities really are.
Only negative is that the first couple of hours of the book are fairly dry until the book starts speaking of Bolton’s appointment to NSA. This book is perfect for anyone who has come to the belief that Trump is a habitual liar & incompetent as President of OUR country!

LOTS OF INFO

All political books by their nature are filled with material that is either loved or hated by most readers.
Any opinion I share would not do a first time reader any good. I will limit my review to structure performance and context.
This book is written mostly in diary form with chapters based on issues. The author does not shy away from any subject.'
It is up to the readers to determine what they think of the content. I will only say for those interested in international relations,
this is a detailed look at the worlds hot spots. The narration is good up to now. I have chosen to write this before I read the last part so any of my opinions don't taint this review. This book is well written and worth reading.

Books like this are essential reading.

I am seeing a lot of review bombing by hard core Trump supporters. If anything that alone should tell you there is something here worth your time regardless of your political views.

The chapters are not exactly easy to follow at first. They focus on events that the author deemed worth covering in detail. That being said they are organized in a mostly chronological order.

The book focuses on specific events that most of us have heard about during this administration. The book is a good description of what it was actually like to be there in the situation rooms, Oval Office, and various meeting behind closed doors.

Narration is good.

It’s worth your time.

The NeoCons

Great insight but it’s as much about Obama’s failed policies, Shillary’s illegality and the NeiCon view of global policy as it is an indictment of Trump.

Bolton is an evil person

While the news headlines focus on his criticisms of Trump, this book reveals how evil Bolton his himself. He represents the worst of the US: He aggressively thinks that he is right and everyone else who doesn't agree with him is deeply wrong. Much of his criticisms of others (both in the US and abroad) are hypocritical with his own hyper partisan, belligerent, bullying, and narrow-minded approach. He is such a terrible person that I (who am anti-Trump) actually feel sympathetic towards Trump. Bolton is such a terrible person that he actually makes Trump look reasonable.