For years ago, I essentially went on an all-consuming quest to understand the American presidency,

all 230 or so years of it.

Well around the same time that I started working on the presidential podcast, early in the

2016 campaign, one of my colleagues at the post had started on his own ambitious quest.

In fact, in the summer of 2015, when Trump was suddenly doing very well in the polls

for the Republican nomination, I approached my editor and said, hey, what if I read a

bunch of Trump's books just to see what they tell us about him?

This is Carlos Lazada.

He's the post's non-fiction book critic.

And he liked the idea that he told me to hurry because, you know, interest will probably

not last that long, you know.

And I thought the same thing.

So Carlos started reading.

He read eight books, three were memoirs, including The Art of the Deal, three were business

advice books, and two were books about politics.

Carlos thought that might be the extent of his reading about Trump.

But he started winning primaries, and suddenly there's all these white working class books

that were coming out.

It's like Hilbilly Elegy and White Trash and strangers in their own land.

So I started reviewing those because people wanted to hear about this segment of Trump's

support base.

Then Trump won the presidency.

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