Archive - January 27, 2019

  Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace Larry Leamer (Nepal 1965-67) Flatiron Books 304 pages January 29, 2019 Kindle $14.99, Hardback $18.29 Where Trump Learned to Rule To know Donald J. Trump it is best to start in his natural habitat: Palm Beach, Florida. It is here he learned the techniques that took him all the way to the White House. Painstakingly, over decades, he has created a world in this exclusive tropical enclave and favorite haunt of billionaires where he is not just president but a king. The vehicle for his triumph is Mar-A-Lago, one of the greatest mansions ever built in the United States. The inside story of how he became King of Palm Beach―and how Palm Beach continues to be his spiritual home even as president―is rollicking, troubling, and told with unrivaled access and understanding by Laurence Leamer. In Mar-A-Lago, the reader will . . .

  Sunday’s January 27, 2019 NYTIMES Book Review has a glowing review of Kristen Roupenian (Kenya 2003-05) new collection of stories, You Know You Want This. The review, done by author Lauren Holmes, writes about “A collection of dark tales from the author of the story ‘Cat Person.’ Of the 12 stories in Kristen’s debut book are considered “exciting, smart, perceptive, weird and dark.” For example: one story is about an increasingly precarious sex game, another about an 11-year-old’s birthday party gone wrong. There’s a princess fairy tale (and yes!) a guy in the Peace Corps who’s tormented by his students. That story, entitled ‘The Night Runner’ begins with this sentence: “The Class Six girls were bad, and everyone knew it.” While Kristen is famous for “Cat Person” published in The New Yorker, that story in tone an approach is not unlike all the stories in this collection, which I have just . . .