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Loading... Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (edition 2020)by Mary L. Trump Ph.D. (Author)
Work InformationToo Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.  jellybeanette | May 26, 2024 |   This is a description of dysfunctional relationship patterns that were perpetuated from generation to generation and how various family members were affected. It was written by a daughter of Freddie. She tells of the impact on her family financially and emotionally. There is not much about the emotional impact on herself. (  ) bread2u | May 15, 2024 | (  ) corliss12000 | Mar 16, 2024 | It is the story of Fred Trump's family from the viewpoint of someone who, despite not being welcomed within it because her father needed to be himself, still was there inside the bunker until her father's death. It is the memory of a person whose entire life was formed by bad parents, her own and theirs. It is the analytical conclusions of a trained psychologist whose degree is from a highly regarded school. It is also chilling, infuriating, and deeply, deeply saddening to read. Freddy Trump never got a break; he died before his life developed meaning and long after he stopped caring about it. Fred, father of the Devil's Brood, was a tyrannical, withholding man without a shred of empathy or emotional capacity. Mary Anne Trump, illegal Scottish immigrant, was useless and indifferent as a mother or grandmother. And there is no doubt that 45 was formed in this nuclear reactor to be exactly who he is. Mary Trump had a balcony seat to the process and tells us exactly what happened on the occasions she was present. This is not sensationalized or presented as a bid for pity. Dr. Trump made a concerted effort to tell us what happened *then* contextualize it on a psychological level. I didn't want to read another hatchet job on 45. Of course I despise him. I don't need more fuel for that binfire. I do, however, need to have some context, some sense of *why* this catastrophe is unfolding. Dr. Mary Trump told me what I wanted to know. The seeds of the present are always in the past. (  )1  richardderus | Mar 11, 2024 | ) ElizabethCromb | Feb 27, 2024 |
 The sins of the father loom large too in Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump (Simon & Schuster), a fascinating memoir from the US president's niece that sheds a very prescient light on his refusal to quit the White House. The author's own father, Donald’s brother Freddy, was the eldest son of the family; in her telling, Donald and Freddy's father, Fred Trump Sr, was a sociopath who pitted his children cruelly against each other. Eventually Freddy Jr is deemed the loser, not fit to inherit the family business, and brutally rejected. Donald steps up, but never forgets the lesson that failure equals ostracism. From then on everything he touches must always be terrific, amazing, the best it could be. But the most interesting assessments she offers are reserved for those inside the “institutions,” the people who might have saved us and certainly have not, from the nuclear family, to the Trump businesses, to New York’s bankers and powerful elites, to Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Jared Kushner. They all knew and know that the emperor has no clothes, even as they devote their last shreds of dignity to effusive praise of his ermine trim and jaunty crown.... As she concludes, his sociopathy “reminds me that Donald isn’t really the problem at all.” That makes hers something other than the 15th book about the fathoms-deep pathologies of Donald Trump: It is the first real reckoning with all those who “caused the darkness.” “Too Much and Never Enough” is a deftly written account of cross-generational trauma, but it is also suffused by an almost desperate sadness — sadness in the stories it tells and sadness in the telling, too. Mary Trump brings to this account the insider perspective of a family member, the observational and analytical abilities of a clinical psychologist and the writing talent of a former graduate student in comparative literature. But she also brings the grudges of estrangement. Writing with the sharp eye of a perpetual outsider in her own family, Trump presents a melancholic portrait of their complicity in her uncle's worst behaviors. Readers who despair for President Trump's ability to lead the country out of its current crises will have their worst suspicions confirmed. “It felt,” she writes, “as though 62,979,636 voters had chosen to turn this country into a macro version of my malignantly dysfunctional family.” ... And it goes on, coming to a head in the unbelievable story of Fred Trump’s will. Does Mary Trump, Ph.D., have an ax to grind? Sure. So do we all. Dripping with snideness, vibrating with rage, and gleaming with clarity—a deeply satisfying read. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric. Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald. A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s." --book jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)973.933092History and Geography North America United States 1901- Bush Administration And Beyond Donald Trump BiographiesLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.82)
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Wikipedia in English
7
In fact, dysfunction doesn’t feel like a strong enough word. The way Freddy Trump, Mary’s father and Donald’s brother, was treated by his family was horrible, and that cruelty extended to Mary and her brother. Money is the only thing that matters to the Trump family, and Fred Trump, their father, was just the sort of villain that would get a book rejected for being too cliché.
I realize that Mary Trump is the opposite of impartial when it comes to this subject, but her words rang true to me. The book is worth a read, but if you’d like to avoid feeling outrage and reading about emotional abuse, I’d skip it. (