Trump: The Art of the Deal: Donald Trump on Thinking Big, Negotiating and Real Estate
"If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big." In The Art of the Deal, a charismatic business leader explains, in an easy style, how he sees the world of business.
Author: Donald J. Trump, with Tony Schwartz
Title: Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987)
Format: English paperback (Random House Business), 384 pages
Scope: Business memoir and negotiation
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1847943039 (ASIN 1847943039)
Background
Trump was born into a family that had made its own money, and was educated at a military academy in his youth. From his teenage years he was exposed to the world of property sales and building renovation, and he became an expert salesman and negotiator with a very distinctive personality.
The Keys to Success
In The Art of the Deal he explains the keys to his success. His motivations and high expectations lead him to take risky decisions which, in his telling and in the reviewer’s view, time has proved right.
Beyond the Book
Since the book appeared he has owned casinos and sports ventures, written several more books on business and investing, supported charities and, of course, become President of the United States, which gives the book a second life as a portrait of how he thinks.
How the Book Came About
The Art of the Deal was published in 1987, when Donald Trump was a well-known New York property developer in his early forties. It was written with the journalist Tony Schwartz, who spent many months following Trump and interviewing him. The book was a major commercial success and spent many weeks at the top of the bestseller lists, turning Trump into a national celebrity well beyond the property world.
A Week in the Life
The book opens with a diary of a typical week, full of phone calls, meetings and negotiations, before setting out Trump’s principles, such as thinking big, protecting the downside, using leverage and knowing your market. The later chapters tell the stories of his major deals: the transformation of the run-down Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, the building of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, his first ventures in Atlantic City and the rebuilding of Central Park’s Wollman skating rink.
A Book Read in Many Ways
Few business books have had such a varied afterlife. Admirers read it as a lively manual of negotiation and self-promotion; critics point to the later financial difficulties of some of the businesses it describes. Schwartz himself said publicly in 2016 that he regretted his role in the book. Readers of any political view will find it a revealing document of the personality and methods of a man who went on to serve two terms as President of the United States.
How to Read It
It is best read as a memoir and a historical document of 1980s New York as much as a how-to guide.
It reads quickly.
Readers can judge its lessons for themselves.
From Queens to Manhattan
Donald Trump was born in New York in 1946, the son of Fred Trump, a builder of middle-class housing in Queens and Brooklyn. He studied at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and joined his father’s company, then set his sights on Manhattan in the 1970s. The book tells that story from his own point of view, and it popularised the phrase "truthful hyperbole", which he used to describe his approach to promotion: an innocent form of exaggeration that, in his view, plays to people’s fantasies.
Who Is It For?
Readers interested in negotiation, real estate or in understanding one of the most talked-about figures of our time. It is his best-known book and reads quickly.
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