{
    "id": 378521,
    "slug": "the-room-where-it-happened-a-white-house-memoir",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "The Room Where It Happened",
    "subtitle": null,
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    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "As President Trump\u2019s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.\n\nThe result is a 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. \u201cI am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn\u2019t driven by reelection calculations,\u201d he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping its prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump\u2019s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy\u2014and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.\n\nHe shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton\u2019s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. \u201cThe differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,\u201d 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\u2014about 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.\n\nBolton\u2019s account 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\u2019s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, \u201cIf you don\u2019t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk\u2014all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work\u2014and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.\u201d\n\nThe turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there\u2014from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea\u2019s 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.",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 592,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2020-06-23",
    "publication_date_latest": "2020-06-23",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [
        {
            "isbn": "9781982148034",
            "product_form": "BB"
        }
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    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:33:59+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-11-02T00:30:58+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4234,
        "slug": "simon-schuster-us",
        "name": "Simon & Schuster US",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T12:38:52+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:10:09+00:00"
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    "contributors": [
        {
            "id": 231338,
            "slug": "john-bolton",
            "key_names": "Bolton",
            "names_before_key": "John",
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            "contributor_role": "A01",
            "readable_contributor_role": "Author"
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    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [
        {
            "scheme_identifier": "32",
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            "subject_code": "320",
            "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:33:59+00:00",
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