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Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success Audiobook
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An Instant New York Times Bestseller • A Washington Post Notable Book • A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year
“A first-rate financial thriller . . . Lucky Loser is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read.” —Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House
Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life “has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.” Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multibillion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except none of it was true. As his wealthy father’s chosen successor, Trump received the equivalent today of more than $500 million in family money. He collected a second windfall thanks to Mark Burnett, the revolutionary television producer who made Trump a star. In truth, Trump’s empire was underwritten, and at times saved, by the equivalent of more than $1 billion that came his way without any of the business expertise he claimed.
Drawing on more than twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump’s financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous examination spanning nearly a century, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. Here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money—what he had, what he lost, and what he has left—and the myth of Trump, the self-made billionaire, exposed.
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"This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes . . . [Lucky Loser] shows in meticulously documented detail how 'even when Trump appeared to be at his best, he was failing,' with massive losses on his core business. The authors prove that without his father’s support, Trump would have been nothing. The book also raises a bigger question about the 'fake it ‘til you make it' ethos of modern America. In a world that conflates the 'trappings of wealth with expertise and ability,' where 'fame, detached from any other marketable talent or skill,' is 'a highly compensated vocation,' does it even matter if you never actually make it? The backbone of the book is the numbers. Because 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 . . . The heartbreaking thing about reading Buettner and Craig’s work is realizing how many passes Trump has gotten over the years, how thoroughly he is a creation of the media, which as the authors write, 'rarely revisited his claims and afforded credibility to everything he said."
— Bethany McLean, The Washington Post
Quotes
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“A first-rate financial thriller… It applies the proper lens through which to view Trump’s career.”
— New York Times -
“Examining tax returns and deeply sourced documents, the authors portray a business empire built on bluster and blue sky rather than reality…[and] turn the Trump origin story on its head.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes…They are able to prove, in incontrovertible detail, the reality under the hype that is Donald Trump.”
— Washington Post -
“Combining the groundbreaking reporting of its authors with details unearthed throughout the years by other journalists and financial analysts, Lucky Loser is comprehensive, persuasive, and packed with damning anecdotes.”
— New Yorker -
“With scalpel-like precision, they investigate decades of business records and tax returns…to 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.”
— The Times (London) -
“Dense with facts and figures, but punctuated with moments of irony and dark humor…Buettner and Craig delve more deeply into this story than anyone I’ve encountered.”
— The Guardian (London) -
“The outlines of this Trump portrait are familiar, but Buettner and Craig provide highly detailed receipts alongside colorful depictions of the former president’s limitless braggadocio and unhinged tantrums.”
— Publishers Weekly -
A first-rate financial thriller . . . Lucky Loser is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read. In good part, that’s because it applies the proper lens through which to view Trump’s career. In this telling, his story lies at the intersection of business and media, with politics arriving only as a secondary concern.
— The New York Times -
This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes . . . [Lucky Loser] shows in meticulously documented detail how 'even when Trump appeared to be at his best, he was failing,' with massive losses on his core business. The authors prove that without his father’s support, Trump would have been nothing. The book also raises a bigger question about the 'fake it ‘til you make it' ethos of modern America. In a world that conflates the 'trappings of wealth with expertise and ability,' where 'fame, detached from any other marketable talent or skill,' is 'a highly compensated vocation,' does it even matter if you never actually make it? The backbone of the book is the numbers. Because 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. . . The heartbreaking thing about reading Buettner and Craig’s work is realizing how many passes Trump has gotten over the years, how thoroughly he is a creation of the media, which as the authors write, 'rarely revisited his claims and afforded credibility to everything he said.
— Bethany McLean, The Washington Post -
A first-rate financial thriller . . . Lucky Loser is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read. In good part, that’s because it applies the proper lens through which to view Trump’s career. In this telling, his story lies at the intersection of business and media, with politics arriving only as a secondary concern.
— Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times -
Combining the groundbreaking reporting of its authors with details unearthed throughout the years by other journalists and financial analysts, Lucky Loser is comprehensive, persuasive, and packed with damning anecdotes.
— The New Yorker -
A first-rate financial thriller . . . Lucky Loser is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read. In good part, that’s because it applies the proper lens through which to view Trump’s career. In this telling, his story lies at the intersection of business and media, with politics arriving only as a secondary concern.
— Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times -
“With scalpel-like precision, they investigate decades of business records and tax returns . . . to 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.
— The Times (UK) -
This is a page turner, with spectacular anecdotes . . . [Lucky Loser] shows in meticulously documented detail how 'even when Trump appeared to be at his best, he was failing,' with massive losses on his core business. The authors prove that without his father’s support, Trump would have been nothing. The book also raises a bigger question about the 'fake it ‘til you make it' ethos of modern America. In a world that conflates the 'trappings of wealth with expertise and ability,' where 'fame, detached from any other marketable talent or skill,' is 'a highly compensated vocation,' does it even matter if you never actually make it? The backbone of the book is the numbers. Because 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 . . . The heartbreaking thing about reading Buettner and Craig’s work is realizing how many passes Trump has gotten over the years, how thoroughly he is a creation of the media, which as the authors write, 'rarely revisited his claims and afforded credibility to everything he said.
— Bethany McLean, The Washington Post -
Combining the groundbreaking reporting of its authors with details unearthed throughout the years by other journalists and financial analysts, Lucky Loser is comprehensive, persuasive, and packed with damning anecdotes.
— The New Yorker -
A book dense with facts and figures, but punctuated with moments of irony and dark humour . . . Buettner and Craig delve more deeply into this story than anyone I’ve encountered.
— The Guardian -
With scalpel-like precision, they investigate decades of business records and tax returns . . . to 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.
— The Times (UK) -
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, The Guardian
Awards
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A New York Times bestseller
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An Amazon.com Bestseller
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A Barnes & Noble Bestseller
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A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
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About the Authors
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig are investigative reporters at the New York Times, whose articles on Donald Trump’s inheritance were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2019. Ever since 2016, their reporting focused on the personal finances of Donald J. Trump, including in-depth articles that revealed the fortune Trump inherited from his father and the record of business failures hidden in twenty years of Trump’s tax returns. Russ Buettner joined the New York Times as an investigative reporter in 2006. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. He previously worked on investigations teams at the Daily News in New York and New York Newsday. Susanne Craig previously covered Wall Street and served as Albany bureau chief for the New York Times. Prior to joining the New York Times in 2010, Craig was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.
About Gabra Zackman
Gabra Zackman is an actress, author, and narrator who has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. She was educated at Northwestern University. A classically trained actress, she has appeared in theaters all over the country as well as on film and television.