Like a speeding truck hurtling toward a sharp curve on a mountain highway, Donald Trump has raised the interest of politics in America.
And that especially includes book sales about his life and presidency.
As seen through book releases and sales, the country is still reeling from (or in many cases, reveling in) his victory. Seemingly every week, publishers serve up new books about the president: explaining his rise, extolling his virtues, speculating about his ties to Russia, analyzing his family and upbringing, and straight-up trolling him.
Trump, more than any other real-life man in recent years, is changing the landscape of books. And readers can’t get enough.
Fear: Trump in the White House, by journalist Bob Woodward, is already the sixth bestselling book on Amazon for all of 2018, and it won’t be released until tomrrow.
In 2018 so far, four of the 10 bestselling books on Amazon are about contemporary politics (including a picture-book parody about vice president Mike Pence and his stance on gay marriage).
This week, the top 25 nonfiction adult hardcover books in the US (according to NPD BookScan, which covers about 85% of trade print book sales) have a higher number of books about contemporary politics than the same week going all the way back to 2012.
In 2018, Fear joins the following books in the Amazon top 10:
- Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, which became a smash-hit after Trump himself tried to shut it down
- Last Week Tonight’s A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a parody about the Pence family’s pet bunny
- James Comey’s Loyalty, a memoir by the former FBI director about being abruptly fired by Trump
Mylo the Panda, written by Jim Heath and released in February, is a children’s book designed to shield young Americans from the “angry and bullying tone” of the Trump era.
