The Divider

The Divider covers all four years of Donald Trump's presidency, from the disorder of its opening days to the violence that closed it. Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, the married journalists who also wrote The Man Who Ran Washington, set out to give the full arc of the administration rather than a string of separate scandals.

Their central argument is that Trump was not simply stumbling from one controversy to the next. Over the course of his term, they contend, he was learning to behave more like the foreign autocrats he openly admired. The book follows that shift through the decisions, confrontations and loyalties that shaped the White House.

The reporting takes readers into the Oval Office for scenes that range from tense to farcical. It describes how close the country came to nuclear conflict with North Korea, which cabinet members had agreed among themselves to resign together, and whether Trump asked Japan's prime minister to nominate him for a Nobel Prize. It also looks at the moral choices faced by the people around him: how they justified serving a man many of them thought unfit for the job, and where each of them finally drew a line.

The account rests on extensive access to people at the center of events, including Trump himself, cabinet officers, military generals, close advisers, members of the Trump family, congressional leaders and foreign officials. Some of them are telling their stories here for the first time.