Review: Too Much and Never Enough

Mary Trump answers the question 52% of us have – how did a Trump presidency happen?

As much as I see Donald Trump as an incompetent, ineffective, morally bankrupt leader, I had no desire to read salacious evidence to prove myself right. But, I found the idea intriguing that a member of his family — a clinical psychologist, no less —  would write a book providing a psychological assessment of a man that many Americans hate and many other Americans love. 

My husband, a clinical psychologist himself, read Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man before me. He diligently examined the psychological assessment and compiled a complicated family tree to trace the connections and issues. He agreed wholeheartedly with Mary Trump’s analysis of her uncle and found the book very compelling… and as he put it, scary.

Of course, I had to read it. 

In short, the book is incredible. It’s essentially the story of how a highly dysfunctional family could succeed in having a family member elected to the highest office in the land. Someone with no skill set or experience to prepare him for such a role – but rather a complex psyche, chutzpah, and perverted confidence that allowed him to rally the basest instincts in people – Trump slid into a position even he failed to anticipate.

According to Mary Trump, President Trump’s earlier characteristics of “bullying, disrespect, and aggressiveness” hardened into personality traits valued by him as well as his distant and demanding father, Fred. Mary explains that father Fred “short-circuited Donald’s ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion…[thereby] “pervert[ing] his son’s perception of the world and his ability to live in it.” 

These personality traits deepened with age and, combined with the focus of the press on his unconventional, flamboyant character, Trump’s name and irreverent tell-it-like-it-is brand became solidified in the American mind — enabling his election in spite of predictions that it could never happen.

The author contends that Trump’s arrogance is deep-seated compensation for his basic insecurities. This arrogant confidence, as she explains, served to draw some people to him who confused this “for strength and his false bravado for accomplishment, and his superficial interest in them for charisma.”

It’s obvious she’s not a fan, but this is a book well worth reading, as it contains a great deal of backstory that helps readers to understand the man. What I can tell you for sure is that many people who should read this book won’t... and those who do will likely only have their preconceived opinions confirmed. 

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and local booksellers. Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 2020. This article contains affiliate links, so if you decide to order a copy of this book, we get a small percentage from the sale.