Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump

Too Much and Never Enough 

By Mary L. Trump 

Genre : Contemporary, non fiction,  psychology.

Rating : 4/5

This is the story of Mary L. Trump who is the neice of Donald Trump. As daughter to the elder brother and first born son of Fred Trump,she gives an honest and first hand version of the events that took place during the formative years of the 45th USA president Donald Trump. 

This is a good book - to tell the story of the life and unjustly treatment of Freddy Trump(her father) and his family by the family's patriarch Fred Trump and his four other children(including Donald). But as a portrait of the psychological make up of Donald Trump and the reasons that have crafted it - I feel it falls short. Most of the terms used to describe him - I thought I have heard them before. They were widely used many times by media personalities and anyone really with some sense of psychological analysis. Albeit having a real connection with Donald, she couldn't come up with much because he is a man who has -  very early on - learnt and taught himself to form no meaningful connections with others. :) And,she sounded like a democrat and much of her antagonism for her uncle Donald seems to come from his cutting her and her brother from what was their father's due in the family inheritance. 

Donald has inherited many of his traits - like lying, cheating, manipulation of truth with hyperbole -  from his father Fred. An apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right? He learnt to suppress his emotional needs and fears as a child in order to cope with his distant and cold parents. He has come to look at vulnerability and neediness in a person with contempt because of his father's derisive and cruel treatment of Freddy for harboring those weaknesses. The family worshipped money and the only metric they used to gauze the worth of someone is the amount they are making/possessed. Trump has molded himself according to this dogma. :) His fears and insecurities are on display for everyone to see and notice - many can do nothing about them more than pointing fingers and calling names - while few can use them as tools to manipulate and play him as they will.

Despite having millions of dollars in family money,  the Trump siblings lived in a fear of being cut out. Every one of them craved for the affection and appreciation of their father Fred -  who cared and really "saw" only Donald. His negative traits though apparent from early on, his father did little - like everyone else afterward - to suppress them. Instead, he supported Donald fully and trusted in him blindly. Perhaps it is only fitting to the powerful patriarch that in his last years, struggling with dementia and Alzheimers, he received the same kind of abhorrent treatment from his most favored son Donald!