The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate

As she did in Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News, journalist Gwenda Blair examines a historical trend through an individual story--or in this case, three--profiling a trio of very different men who happened to be grandfather, father, and son. Friedrich Trump (1869-1918), a German-born barber who got rich providing lodging, food, and female companionship to Klondike gold miners, founded the family real estate empire in Queens, New York. Fred Trump (1905-99) took advantage of new government programs to build affordable urban housing and make lots of money for himself. Donald, born in 1946, was just as interested in being famous as in being wealthy. His first big coup, the Grand Hyatt hotel, opened in 1980, launching a decade of extravagant acquisitions (including two Atlantic City casinos and the Plaza Hotel) that made "the Donald" a byword for '80s excess. Blair conscientiously covers Donald's flamboyant personal life, from the womanizing through the stormy marriage to Ivana and the notorious romance with Marla Maples. Her sometimes portentous prose suits the pumped-up style of the man who promoted his projects by promoting himself with everything from a ghostwritten autobiography, The Art of the Deal, to a board game bearing his name. But the author's main interest, and her book's principal fascination, lies in tracing the evolution of American real estate development over the course of the 20th century, as bare-knuckled individual entrepreneurship gave way to business in partnership with government, which was in turn replaced by high-stakes financial manipulation using image to shape reality. Blair may well be right when she claims that the Trumps' saga constitutes "a singular history of American capitalism itself." --Wendy Smith