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| Author | Donald J. Trump Tony Schwartz |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Business |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | November 1, 1987 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 372 |
| ISBN | 0-394-55528-7 |
| Followed by | Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990) |
Trump: The Art of the Deal is a 1987 book credited toDonald J. Trump and written by journalistTony Schwartz. Partmemoir and part business-advice book, it was the first book credited to Trump,[1] and it helped to make him a household name.[2][3] It reached number 1 onThe New York Times Best Seller list, stayed there for 13 weeks, and altogether held a position on the list for 48 weeks.[4]
Trump cited it as one of his proudest accomplishments and his second-favorite book after theBible.[5][6] Schwartz calledghost-writing the book his "greatest regret in life, without question," and both he and the book's publisher,Howard Kaminsky, alleged that Trump had played no role in its writing. Trump has given conflicting accounts on the question of authorship.[4][7]
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The book talks about Trump's childhood inJamaica Estates, Queens. It describes his early work inBrooklyn prior to moving toManhattan and building theTrump Organization, his actions and thoughts in developing theGrand Hyatt Hotel andTrump Tower, in renovatingWollman Rink, and regarding various other projects.[8] The book also contains an 11-step formula for business success, inspired byNorman Vincent Peale'sThe Power of Positive Thinking.[9]
Trump was persuaded to produce the book byCondé Nast ownerSi Newhouse after the May 1984 issue of his magazineGQ—with Trump appearing on the cover—sold well.[9][10] Journalist Tony Schwartz was recruited directly by Trump after he read Schwartz's extremely negative 1985New York Magazine article, "A Different Kind of Donald Trump Story", regarding his failed attempts to forcibly and illegally evictrent-controlled andrent-stabilized tenants from a building that he had bought on Central Park South in 1982.[4] To Schwartz's amazement, Trump loved the article and even had the cover, which had an unflattering portrait of him, autographed by Schwartz and hung in his office.[4] Schwartz was hired to write the book for $250,000 upfront; Trump assigned him half of theroyalties.[4] Schwartz later admitted that his motivation was purely financial, and he needed the money to support his new family.[11]
According to Schwartz in July 2016, Trump did not write any of the book, choosing only to remove a few critical mentions of business colleagues at the end of the process. Trump responded with conflicting stories, saying "I had a lot of choice of who to have write the book, and I chose Schwartz", but then said "Schwartz didn't write the book.I wrote the book." FormerRandom House headHoward Kaminsky, the original publisher, said "Trump didn't write a postcard for us!"[4] The book was published with the authorship given as "Donald Trump with Tony Schwartz". In 2019, Schwartz suggested that the work be "recategorized as fiction".[12]
To inform the content and style, Schwartz drew on the already-substantial archive of news, profiles and books about Trump as well as interviews with Trump associates. When interviews with Trump himself proved unproductive, the two struck on an unusual alternative: Schwartz listened in on Trump's office phone calls for several months to witness him in action.[4] The experience was condensed into chapter one, "Dealing: A Week in the Life", which introduces the reader to countless boldface names and events. The chapter was excerpted inNew York Magazine to promote the book[13] and served as a blueprint for future autobiographies.[14]
Schwartz was the subject of a July 2016 article inThe New Yorker in which he describes Trump unfavorably and relates how he came to regret writingThe Art of the Deal.[4] He also stated that if it were to be written today it would be very different and titledThe Sociopath.[4] Schwartz repeated his self-criticism onGood Morning America, saying he had "put lipstick on a pig".[15] In response, Trump's attorneys demanded that Schwartz cede his royalties to Trump.[16][17]
The cover photo was taken by photographerMichele Singer, who would later become film director and actorRob Reiner's second wife.[18][19]
The Art of the Deal was published in November 1987 byRandom House. A promotional campaign was undertaken in conjunction with its release. This included Trump holding a release party atTrump Tower, hosted byJackie Mason, featuring a celebrity-filled guest list.[9] Trump made a series of appearances on television talk shows and was pictured on a number of magazine covers.[20]
Two months before publication, in a bid to promote the book, Trump waded into national politics.[21][22][23] On September 2, 1987, working with his publicist, Dan Klores, and long-running political interlocutor,Roger Stone, Trump ran full-page ads in major newspapers excoriating Washington for defending allies on the American taxpayers' dime. On October 22, he spoke to a New Hampshire crowd under the aegis of a "Draft Trump" movement. Of the speech, Trump said in early 2016, "I wasn't even thinking about [running for president] ... It was a lot to do with my book."[24] Klores said, "He didn't run but it was probably the greatest book promotion of all time."[23] Excerpts were published inNew York Magazine. The book has been translated into over a dozen languages.[9]
Trump and Schwartz had an agreement to split royalties from the sale of the book on a 50–50 basis.[25][26] In 1988, Trump set up theDonald J. Trump Foundation to give away the royalties, promising four or five million dollars "to the homeless, toVietnam veterans, forAIDS,multiple sclerosis".[25][26] According to aWashington Post investigation the donations failed to materialize; the paper said "he gave less to those causes than he did tohis older daughter's ballet school".[26]The Washington Post askedTrump's 2016 presidential campaign if he had donated the $55,000 of royalties he had earned from the book in the first six months of 2016 to charity, as he promised in the 1980s, and it did not respond.[27]
By 2016, Schwartz said he had received some $1.6 million in royalty payments.[25] Schwartz said he would be donating six months of royalties (worth $55,000) to theNational Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrants to remain in the United States regardless of whether or not their entry was legal. Schwartz had earlier donated royalties he received in the second half of 2015, worth $25,000, to a number of charities including theNational Immigration Forum. Schwartz said he wanted to help the people Trump was attacking.[27]
Financial disclosures by Trump for 2018 revealed the book earned over $1 million that year, and it was the only title of his dozen-plus authored books that made money.[28] Trump's financial disclosures for 2019 reported royalties forThe Art of the Deal in the $100,000 to $1 million range.[29]
Precise figures of the number of copies sold ofThe Art of the Deal are unavailable because its publication preceded theNielsen BookScan era.[20] It had afirst printing of 150,000 copies. Several magazine and book accounts state that it sold over one million hardcover copies[9] or one million copies.[4][30] A 2016CBS News investigation reported that an unnamed source familiar with the book's sales placed the figure at 1.1 million copies sold.[25]
Trump said in his2016 presidential campaign thatThe Art of the Deal is "the No. 1 selling business book of all time". An analysis byPolitiFact found that other business books had sold many more copies thanThe Art of the Deal. While it is impossible to find exact sales figures, a range of possibilities based on known claims and facts were given. When compared to six other famous business books,The Art of the Deal ranked in fifth place according to the analysis; the top-selling book,How to Win Friends and Influence People, outsold it by a factor of 15 times.[20]
At the time of publication,Publishers Weekly called it a "boastful, boyishly disarming, thoroughly engaging personal history".[31]People magazine gave it a mixed review.[1] Three years later, journalistJohn Tierney noted Trump "appears to have ignored some of his own advice" in the book due to "well-publicized problems with his banks".[32] Trump's self-promotion, best-selling book and media celebrity status led one commentator in 2006 to call him "a poster-child for the 'greed is good' 1980s".[33] (The phrase "Greed is good" is from the movieWall Street, which was released a month afterThe Art of the Deal.)Jim Geraghty in theNational Review said in 2015 that the book showed "a much softer, warmer, and probably happier figure than the man dominating the airwaves today".[5] John Paul Rollert, anethicist writing about the book inThe Atlantic in 2016, says Trump sees capitalism not as an economic system but amorality play.[34]
The book coined the phrase "truthful hyperbole" describing "an innocent form of exaggeration—and... a very effective form of promotion". Schwartz said Trump loved the phrase.[35][36] In January 2017, the phrase was noted for its similarity to the phrase "alternative facts" coined byCounselor to the PresidentKellyanne Conway when she defendedWhite House Press SecretarySean Spicer's widely derided statements about the attendance atTrump's inauguration asPresident of the United States.[37][38][39]
Schwartz described Trump's lying:[40]
'Lying is second nature to him,' Schwartz said. 'More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.'
In 2021,Yuri Shvets, an ex-KGB agent, claimed that Trump had been cultivated by the KGB for 40 years, starting in the 1980s as tensions between the United States andSoviet Union were thawing. InThe Art of the Deal, Trump acknowledges the potential business opportunities arising from the positive turn in the relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union which includes the possibility of building "a large luxury hotel across the street from theKremlin in partnership with the Soviet government." It was during this period that the ex-KGB agent alleges to have discussed with Trump going into politics and were "stunned" when he returned to the US and took out a full-page ad parroting anti-Western Russian talking points.[41]
Biographers, associates and fact-checkers have cast doubt on the book's version of events. To those with detailed knowledge of the projects, the singular hero of the book appeared instead as a fictional composite of the many power-brokers, doers and domain experts who actually made things happen. This omniscient persona faced exaggerated odds and won overstated profits. As biographer Gwenda Blair wrote in 2000, "InThe Art of the Deal, [Trump] claims that business deals are what distinguish him ... but his most original creation is the continuous self-inflation."[42] Still, those tracing out Trump's life could not discern the more limited reality all at once. Speaking 20 years later, Blair bemoaned her failure, as a biographer, to have "understood how fabricated [the book] was ... how that founding myth was so riddled with at best exaggeration."[43]
Chapter four, "The Cincinnati Kid", tells the story of Trump's "first big deal".[44] According to the book, Trump came up with the idea of buying Swifton Village, a struggling apartment complex in Cincinnati. He partnered with his fatherFred to turn Swifton around; then, just as the neighborhood headed irretrievably downhill, tricked a buyer into overpaying: "The price was $12 million—or approximately a $6 million profit for us. It was a huge return on a short-term investment."[45] Roy Knight, part of the Village's maintenance crew, told reporters that the project was actually Fred Trump's "baby";[46] biographers generally agree. Donald was cloistered atNew York Military Academy when his father boarded a plane to Ohio and won the property at auction. He attended college while Fred turned things around.[47] The younger Trump did visit on occasion, but only to do "yardwork and cleaning".[48] Finally, the sale price was $6.75 million, $1 million more than the purchase price, representing little if any profit after eight years of expenses (estimated at $500,000) and interest.[49][50]
Chapter six, "Grand Hyatt", tells the story of Trump's true first big deal. Without it, the book opined, "I'd probably be back in Brooklyn today, collecting rents."[51] In his 1992 biography of Trump, journalistWayne Barrett, who had covered the project in detail, took issue with many of the book's claims. In particular, he noted the absence of nearly all the key players—from New York governorHugh Carey, a longtimeTrump family associate, to city planners betting their careers on the novel private-public partnership, toLouise Sunshine, Carey's former chief fundraiser. "InThe Art of the Deal," Barrett wrote, "it was as if Donald walked out onstage alone."[52]
Chapter seven, "Trump Tower," opens with a fully hatched plan. "In order to put up the building I had in mind, I was going to have to assemble several ... adjacent pieces—and then seek numerous zoning variances."[53]George Ross, one of Trump's lawyers on the project and later his lieutenant onThe Apprentice, seasons 1–5, recalled the process differently. Where Trump depicted himself expertly poring over his "air-rights contract" and "discover[ing] an unexpected bonus,"[54] Ross wrote: "I enlightened Donald about the zoning laws that permitted one owner to sell and transfer unused building rights (commonly called air rights)."[55] One key step involved the adjacentTiffany's store. "Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone at Tiffany," Trump wrote, "and the owner, Walter Hoving, was known not only as a legendary retailer but also as a difficult, demanding, mercurial guy."[56] Trump claimed that hecold-called Hoving and tricked him into a one-sided deal. Per Ross, however, the transaction was aboveboard and owed entirely to Fred Trump's business connections: "Donald's father and Walter Hoving had done some business together and Donald's father suggested to Donald that he could work out a fair deal with Hoving in a short period of time."[57]
Based onTrump's tax returns between 1985 and 1994 which showed a loss greater than "nearly any other individual American taxpayer" during that period,[58] co-author Schwartz suggested that the book might be "recategorized as fiction".[12]
In 1988, Trump andTed Turner announced plans for a television film based on the book.[59] The plans had been largely abandoned by 1991.[60]Mark Burnett, creator ofThe Apprentice, credited the book for inspiring "his leap from selling T-shirts off racks on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles to producing television shows," and later, after success withSurvivor, the idea of a show starring Trump himself.[61] Trump's monologue opened the long-running show: "I've mastered the art of the deal ... And as the master I want to pass my knowledge along to somebody else. I'm looking for... The Apprentice."[62] Aspects of the book were used as the basis for the 2016parody filmDonald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie.[63]
Donald's desperate search for a way to promote his book onto the best seller list inspired one of the most cynical schemes of his career: the Trump for President campaign.
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