Leonnig and Rucker have deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., and they rely on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses to reveal the forty-fifth president up close. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump's first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty--not to the country, but to the president himself--and Trump's North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy. This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement--but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America's democracy and its common heart as a nation.