The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump

The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump

by Mary Jordan

Narrated by Mary Jordan

Unabridged — 9 hours, 20 minutes

The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump

The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump

by Mary Jordan

Narrated by Mary Jordan

Unabridged — 9 hours, 20 minutes

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Overview

In this “scrupulously reported biography” (NPR) Jordan documents how Melania Trump had discussing being First Lady nearly two decades before she landed in the White House and how she encouraged her husband to enter the race for president.

Based on interviews with more than one hundred people in five countries, The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump is “an extraordinary work” (Salon) that draws an unprecedented portrait of the first lady. We see that behind the scenes Melania Trump is not only part of President Trump's inner circle, but for some key decisions she has been his single most influential advisor.

Jordan interviewed key people in Melania's close circle who speak publicly for the first time and uncovered never-before-seen photos and tapes of the tall woman with “tiger eyes,” as a judge in an early modeling contest said. The Art of Her Deal shows Melania's ascent from a modest life, tracing her journey from childhood under a communist dictator to her complicated relationship with Donald Trump. The picture that emerges is “that the first lady is not a pawn but a player... and a woman able to get what she wants from one of the most powerful and transparently vain men in the world” (NPR).

And while it is her husband who became famous for the phrase “the art of the deal,” this is the story of the art of her deal.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

07/06/2020

In this brisk and largely flattering biography, Washington Post reporter Jordan (coauthor, Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland) portrays first lady Melania Trump as “independent, highly focused, and acutely aware of her own power and when to deploy it.” Contrary to reports that Melania didn’t want her husband to run for president and cried the night he was elected, she was actually one of the few people in Trump’s inner circle who believed he could win, Jordan writes, and had an influential role in key decisions such as selecting Mike Pence for vice president. Jordan tracks Melania’s journey from the former Yugoslavia (present-day Slovenia), where she was born Melanija Knavs in 1970, to modeling gigs in Milan and Paris, where she “stayed away from the drugs and hard party scene” and “left few traces,” and New York, where she starred in a Camel Light ad campaign before meeting Trump sometime in 1998 (accounts of precisely when and where vary). Though some anecdotes strain plausibility, especially the claim (based on a third-hand source) that Melania told Trump she was angry about the Access Hollywood tape leak because it meant he might have lost the election “for us,” others (including tensions with stepdaughter Ivanka Trump and the securing of improved prenup terms before relocating to the White House in June 2017) ring true. This detailed yet credulous account adds depth to the prevailing portrait of Melania as merely an “elegant accessory” to her husband. (June)

From the Publisher

"Well-reported...[Jordan] brings new information about this unconventional first lady to the surface."
New York Times

"An extraordinary work of discovery and empathy...The Art of Her Deal is beyond all doubt an extraordinary book. It is impeccably reported and written — light, clear, engaging and honest throughout."
Salon

"Far from the helpless stereotype that has become a running punchline, Jordan’s research reveals something larger: the personality and strategy required to become a successful despot’s wife. ... Jordan deftly, and without an agenda, decodes Melania."
NBC News

"Impressively reported... Mary Jordan has pulled back the veil. It reveals the first lady to be a power player in her own right, one driven by a very clear sense of her own self-interest."
Karen Tumulty, The Washington Post

"[THE ART OF HER DEAL] adds depth to the prevailing portrait of Melania as merely an 'elegant accessory' to her husband."
Publishers Weekly

"A new, scrupulously reported biography by Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan... [argues] that the first lady is not a pawn but a player... and a woman able to get what she wants from one of the most powerful and transparently vain men in the world ... The result is a convincing case that those 'who dismiss her as nothing more than an accessory do not understand her or her influence.'"
NPR

"Jordan diligently assembles the facts on the Access Hollywood scandal, the Stormy Daniels affair, the plagiarized convention speech, and the bizarre jacket at the border, among other events. The author’s presentation often achieves the simple elegance her subject aspires to. Interesting and fair—as complete a portrait as we can expect of the current first lady."
Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

2020-06-27
How a determined Eastern European model reinvented herself as one of the most prominent women in the world.

As Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporter Jordan clearly demonstrates in this meticulously researched biography, her subject shares many similarities with her husband. “She is seen,” writes the author, “as the good-hearted princess who needs to be saved from her rapacious and bullying husband, the vulnerable immigrant swept up in his presidential ambitions who cried the night he was selected, the vapid and shallow model with nothing much to say about the world, the lucky beauty who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Yet she is none of these things.” Jordan spent five years uncovering the truth, some of which has been carefully hidden along the way and some of which remains in dispute. For example, was she actually successful as a model? Was she washed up by the time she encountered her future husband? Or, as one insider claims, was her career “really cut short by her meeting Donald Trump”? Even before Trump, “Melania had perfected the art of sealing off different parts of her life.” Via her interviews with more than 120 subjects in five countries, the author steams open the seals. The hypocrisy of Trump’s position on “chain migration” has never been made clearer than it is here: Melania brought her parents to the U.S., and she dines with them daily; her parents and her son speak Slovenian at home; her mother cooks and even does the dishes. As for her purported fluency in Italian, French, and German, the author notes that those who have worked closely with Melania have “never heard her use more than a few words in those languages.” Jordan diligently assembles the facts on the Access Hollywood scandal, the Stormy Daniels affair, the plagiarized convention speech, and the bizarre jacket at the border, among other events. The author’s presentation often achieves the simple elegance her subject aspires to.

Interesting and fair—as complete a portrait as we can expect of the current first lady.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940177204703
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 06/16/2020
Edition description: Unabridged
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