Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age

by John Lithgow

Overview

Following the success of New York Times bestseller Dumpty comes award-winning actor and national bestselling author John Lithgow's next book of satirical poetry chronicling the era of Trump madness. Darker, funnier, and more hard-hitting than ever, Lithgow writes with poetic fury and cutting satire, taking readers verse–by–verse through the last year of even more unthinkable and shocking real events surrounding Trump and his administration—including poems about the impeachment, Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney, Jay Sekulow, Jim Jordan, Roger Stone, and others. With completely new poems and never–before–seen line drawings, Lithgow will once again make readers laugh in frenzied times with this mix of striking and humorous prose—dismantling the reign of Dumpty one stanza at a time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781797209487
Publisher:	Chronicle Books LLC
Publication date:	09/29/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	104
Sales rank:	149,886
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

John Lithgow is an actor with two Tonys, six Emmys, two Golden Globes, and two Oscar nominations. He has starred in the hit TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dexter, The Crown, and Perry Mason and in critically acclaimed films such as The World According to Garp, Terms of Endearment, and the recent Bombshell. Lithgow has performed on Broadway twenty-five times and in England with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. In addition to the New York Times bestseller Dumpty, he has written nine children's picture books, and his recordings for kids have landed him four Grammy nominations.

Editorial Reviews

"As with the first volume, this one is a short, succinct, laugh-out-loud affair, and no one in the Trump administration is above Lithgow’s eagle-eyed scrutiny…. A hilarious and pertinent parody to help pass the time until the November election decides the nation’s fate.” —Kirkus

From the Publisher

2020-07-22
Lithgow continues his poetic skewering of “a POTUS whose pants are routinely on fire.”

In this clever follow-up to Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse (2019), the actor and author unleashes more razor-sharp satirical wit, lampooning the second half of “our distractible,” Twitter-obsessed chief’s presidential term. Lithgow begins with the impeachment in late 2019 and moves through the litany of lies and blunders that have formed the Trump administration’s teetering foundation. Beyond the primary target, the author also draws farcical caricatures of fumbling politicos like senior advisers and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani (“filled with rage and babbling bluster, / ‘America’s Mayor’ has lost his luster”). Lithgow renders Mitch McConnell as a manipulative, suffocatingly partisan reptile: “By keeping his party in line and tight-knitted, / The Tortoise prevailed and got Dumpty acquitted / But by treating the trial as a legal blood sport, / He rendered the Senate a kangaroo court.” Political strategist and a man Lithgow calls the “dirty trickster, artful dodger,” Roger Stone gets a full-page poem and makes good company with another Trump blunder: “substituting his Sharpie for science” after mistracking Hurricane Dorian. The cover art and interior line drawings provide suitable graphic accompaniment to the text. As with the first volume, this one is a short, succinct, laugh-out-loud affair, and no one in the Trump administration is above Lithgow’s eagle-eyed scrutiny. Unwilling to leave even readers with limited political knowledge behind, the author also includes brief profiles of the politicians that he eviscerates. All the snarky novelty doesn’t reveal anything new nor untrue; rather, Lithgow whisks the obvious into a creatively brilliant distraction that most readers will enjoy. Even loyal Trumpers may find a stray chuckle for the ridiculousness and the current administration’s political circus.

A hilarious and pertinent parody to help pass the time until the November election decides the nation’s fate.

Kirkus Reviews