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Rage  By  cover art

Rage

By: Bob Woodward
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
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Publisher's Summary

An unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest, from Bob Woodward.

Woodward, the number one international best-selling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes listeners into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans.

In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months - an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind - the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the 'dynamite behind every door'. At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president.

Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with first-hand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents.

Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a 'fantasy film'. Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. 'Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?' Trump told the author in July. 'Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.'

©2020 Bob Woodward (P)2020 Simon & Schuster UK

What listeners say about Rage

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not surprising

Enlightening.
Its been almost 5 years of watching with utter sadness, the cruelty and unchristian nature of the most powerful man in one of the most powerful countries in the world. Been perplexing that so many could put their trust in him.

Hopefully this is read by some and may cause them to look honestly at what they did to America 4 years ago and change course.

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Recordings

Basically a putting down the recordings of interviews with Trump. I would have liked more interpretation from the author. Scary thought that people like Trump can be elected as President.

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great compelling read

great compelling read with some interesting insights into the hires and fires and craziness that was the trump presidency

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Great objective journalism

Bob is extremely amazing. The narrator is excellent. The book is highly revelant & meaningful.

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  • carrosvoss
  • 09-16-20

Unfortunately true

This book is well researched, competent and quite objective. And it is terrifying. It provides background and detailed information on events that are all well known. It is a must read for anyone interested in current events.
Btw Trump sounds quite intelligent and almost coherent when his words are read by a good narrator. And that is probably the weirdest thing about this audiobook.
Also, this book has the most understated last sentence in the history of writing. It could be defined as definition of understatement.

10 people found this helpful

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  • Alex
  • 09-23-20

A surreal horror show

I 've been listening to Bob Woodward's "Rage" - the detailed account of the first 3 years of Trump's presidency based on 18 interviews and extraordinary relationship he built with him. Wow - it really is Alice in Wonderland stuff, very surreal, but it's real, therefore bloody horrifying. A brilliant piece.

9 people found this helpful

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  • Anonymous User
  • 09-23-20

wakeup call to the world. the US is in peril

A robust, eloquent review of DTrump as president of the U.S., of democracy and the state of the U.S. nation, and the intricacies of world politics wealth and power. Hugely valuable contribution to the thinking person's library. Thank you Mr Woodward.

7 people found this helpful

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  • anne
  • 09-23-20

Absolutely enthralling listen.

Rage is an absolutely enthralling listen. It feels as though the listener has a seat in every room, taking in every conversation and observing the participants. Giving a much clearer picture of the events than we can glean from the news media. All this is done without un necessary comment, judgement or vitriol from the author or others who participated in the events portrayed. I can recommend it to any one who seriously wants to understand the current political decisions being made or not as the case may be without descending to the level of spurious gossip.

5 people found this helpful

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  • FKblue
  • 10-01-20

The Age of Trump

Woodward’s last book on Trump ‘Fear’ was excellent. I believe ‘Rage’ is superior.
The key notable difference is that Trump has contributed heavily in this book. It illuminates what a buffoon, a dangerous buffoon the current leader of the ‘free’ world is.
Let’s hope the American electorate make a wise choice in the coming weeks. Another 4 years of the current occupant of the WH might prove to be unbearable for most people.

3 people found this helpful

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  • Greta Evans
  • 10-11-20

Got to love a Bob Woodward book

I thoroughly enjoyed Rage after having read Fear too. The insight that Bob woodward gives in his 17 recorded interviews with Trump is fascinating. He asks brilliant questions, bringing trump back to the subject when he tries to obfuscate or his attention span dwindles. Dan Coats section really interesting as well as James Mattis rebuke of Lafayette park clearing. I only wish more and more would go publicly on the record. I am not at all surprised at what trump says in the book...he hasn't got a clue and is the wrong man for the job!

2 people found this helpful

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  • Steve Johns
  • 10-01-20

Changed my opinion of Trump completely !

So easy to listen to and follow along. no bias one way or the other from the author that I could hear. I am definitely getting the previous book " Fear".

2 people found this helpful

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  • Snow Angel
  • 10-11-20

Another great book by Woodward

An honest report and insight into the Presidency of Donald Trump. A lesson for the future and a whole chapter for history on how America got it drastically wrong and changed the power balance of the world. I wish the next President all the luck in the world, he or she will need it to right the wrongs of this administration and restore confidence in America. This book will be a basis on which history will be written and studied.

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  • Jacqui Hastings
  • 10-05-20

As always one of the best.

As always one of the best political books of this time, and I have read quite a few at this point. Insightful insider knowledge from the horses mouth. With the tapes to back up every word. just brilliant Woodward does it again.

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  • Sheldon
  • 10-01-20

You couldn't make it up.

A favourable account of Trump. Our future is in his hands and here you get to know him.

1 person found this helpful

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  • Anonymous User
  • 09-20-20

Enlightening

The content of this book has given me a better understanding of what has happened within the Whitehouse over the last four years. As someone with a novice interest in American politics it has been an enlightening experience, as well as a chilling one.

Trump's responses with Woodward remind me of some of those I have with my own father, who has a diagnose neurodegenerative disease. scattered and focused on the emotions, and spinning the facts to suit his own reality.

I think Woodward was fair with Trump. As President he should be held to the highest standards. He has the highest responsibility for his people wellbeing, and by his own admission he will not take ownership of bad, while taking full responsibility of the good. I agree with Woodward that this is not the qualities we want in a leader of a nation.

I encourage anyone with an interest in being a politician to listen to this book as a case study and a warning of what not to do.

15 people found this helpful

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  • Anonymous User
  • 09-26-20

Exhausting brilliant


Bob at the end of this book stated he felt weary about the state of the country and the impact of the virus on America. I feel personally weary having listened to this.
Woodward’s reporting on this book was just excellent, he was fair to trump multiple times in their interviews announcing where trump was right, but also giving him measured questions that could elevate the man and consciously bring him as a human empathetic and compassionate man and as a leader to the forth front, but alas Trump in his personal interviews with Woodward was just incapable of internal reflection and candidness about his real feeling about the suffering of so many.
This was one of the most frustrating books, I honestly felt like smacking my head against a wall with trumps nonsensical ramblings and zero sum thinking and because the interviews are mostly recorded it leaves little doubt that trump has the mentality of a 5 year old, incapable of taking personal responsibility, for understanding nuance on complex world issues he presumes are simple, his binary thinking and his victim mindset.
His language is at best third grade. I was kind of hoping with direct interviews much of his rhetoric and approach to language were an act but no he really is this narcissistic and also incompetent.
He truly believes he has done a great job, now at the time of this review over 200,000 Americans are dead!
The economy in shambles, tens of millions unemployed. And he uses just fear tactics without any real plan to salvage America. Trump clearly has no idea what he is doing, no plan, no ideology, no vision, on division.
Antifa today is the caravan of migrants in 2018. It’s all just none sense. And I wish the media would just stop covering every dumb thing he says on a mic. He is clearly playing them, and thrives on outraging the left, to steal pointless headlines.
Trump to be honest was unintelligent, nonsensical and kind of boring. Graham, kushner, Mattis, and Rex tillerson were actually far more interesting because they have dimensions, trump does not. And it’s from his own words you can make this statement.
This book should tick off liberals, frustrate and cause direct introspection for conservatives and redefine to swing voters what and who this man really is.
God help America honestly if this man wins again.
Great book, excellent reporting and Woodward has the patients of a saint.
I’ll add that it’s sad RBG’s wish won’t be honoured and that she didn’t get to see out the year.
As this book actually contains trump being interviews I’d say it’s an essential pickup, that and his nieces book if you want to try and understand the 45th POTUS.
Prompts to the narrator, not an easy task repeating trumps words.

10 people found this helpful

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  • Jim Grant
  • 09-22-20

Hooked on the US horror

Trump is an appalling magnet - this book tells about his seductive powers and helps us to understand how once decent people become blind to this awful human being and abandon their values along the way. Riveting psychologically. What a mess this great country has become. So sad.

9 people found this helpful

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  • Marc Dimmick
  • 10-01-20

scary

It is hard and scary to believe and understand that this sort of person is a lead of such a great country. I fear for the US and the rest of the world and the future to come.

7 people found this helpful

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  • Tim Lehmann
  • 10-14-20

Essential listening. Hostorical and starkly honest

I was not going to bother with another book on Trump, as like a lot of people, I'm pretty exhausted with everything about him and am just wanting it to be done with.

However, with the election only a few weeks away, I thought a thorough and honest summary by a respected reporter would probably be a good idea. I was riveted from start to finish and hadn't realised how much I'd forgotten from the last four years of chaotic theatre that is the Trump Administration.

As a non American, I can only hope US voters can end at least this part of the nightmare that has been 2020.

4 people found this helpful

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  • Tino Guglielmo
  • 10-11-20

A must read. A brilliant historical record.

My goodness. One of the few books that one needs to read that chronicles the Trump Presidency. i can’t wait to see how the rest of his term unfolds

4 people found this helpful

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  • Gordon Neilsen
  • 10-15-20

Wow

I cannot believe this is truth. I just sit here in Australia and I shake my head at this man captured in these words and voice. Very very troubling.

Great timeline, well read and unfortunately to true.

3 people found this helpful

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  • James
  • 12-02-20

Woodward struggles to make sense of Trump

A lot of this is old territory, since I guess some of it hadn't happened in time to make it into Woodward's previous book, or he hadn't had the participation of certain interviewees. A lot of the rest of it is reputation rehabilitation for those interviewees, like Tillerson, Mattis, Graham, Kushner, et al., and those parts are mostly pretty grating. But when the narrative pushes further into the term, the book gets a bit more novel. It was already public knowledge that Kim Jong Un utterly played Trump with the flattery of summits and love letters, but seeing the syrupy contents of those letters does show vividly just the extent to which Trump was played. It's not surprising, but it still is just a little shocking. And then, of course, the pandemic hits. Woodward runs parallel narratives for a little while, showing the secret goings on in the administration early in the pandemic, in tandem with the mostly-unrelated topics he had been interviewing the president about at the same time. Eventually the threads converge, and the conversations with Trump become all about the rolling 2020 nightmare. Woodward clearly struggled with how to present the interviews; Trump is such a hopeless interviewee that accurately representing his statements in anything other than direct quotation is basically impossible, and when he is directly quoted, he's so incoherent, repetitive, and mendacious as to make the resulting passages practically unreadable. Woodward pitches him softball after softball, and Trump consistently flubs. He has to be asked the same question half a dozen times or more before he gives an answer approaching any sort of relevance. Late in their interviews, to a question about how Trump would speak to the feelings of those impacted by racial injustice, Trump (eventually) responds with at least some self-awareness, saying that he's a doer, not a talker. As a "talker" might put it: you may not be able to expect him to give RFK-esque speeches that salve the nation's wounds of racial division, but at least you can rely on him to do what he can to fix the problem. That would almost be a good pitch for his alternate version of the presidency, if only it had been borne out by, you know, him actually doing something. ("But the First Step Act!" one might protest. Yeah, Trump signed it, but he had no role in drafting it, and he only came to support it because Kushner lobbied him, and Kushner only lobbied him because of his ex-con dad. "But opportunity zones!" "But record money for black colleges!" Etc. Woodward addresses each of these with the fact checks that litter the book, and suffice to say, none of these measures seem to have convinced anyone who wasn't already convinced. And this is to say nothing of, you know, the global pandemic.) In both this book and Woodward's previous, Trump sometimes comes off a little differently than a partisan like me might have thought he would. This Trump, while still plainly incompetent and way out of his depth, occasionally seems well-meaning and almost innocent. It's not enough to make one want to vote for him, but it does occasionally spark a glimmer of sympathy. I mean, can you imagine having to be the president when you have no idea what you're doing? It sounds like a waking nightmare. Fortunately, we'll all be waking up pretty soon.

I often found myself wishing that Robert Petkoff would have somehow distinguished the voices of Trump and Woodward in their dialogues. As I've mentioned, Trump is utterly incoherent, so it's not always clear when he's stopped speaking, and when he's just dropped a thought mid-sentence and started to say something else. I recognise that having Petkoff do a Trump impression would have the unfortunate effect of making the book sound like a parody, but you kind of need something to make sense of the mess.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 09-27-20

Alarmingly Insightful

Trumps Hubris in full display here. Along with his cohorts. It really struck me how much of an effort Mattis, Tillerson and Coats played in this debacle. This was a great listen.

2 people found this helpful

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  • Colette Burnell
  • 09-27-20

Disturbing

Everything you know about this Presidency is confined in horrifying detail. I couldn't stop listening despite the anxiety it was provoking.

2 people found this helpful