Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

Mary L. Trump

Jul 2020 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who occupied the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.

Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.

Ratings and reviews

Enlightening and well written, Mary Trump's insights into her family is a must read for everyone. It reveals not only what makes her uncle tick but also how dysfunction affects a family generationally.

I wanted to like the book, I really did. However; the title doesn't really mirror the book. It seems she has an axe to grind and is very angry with her family for letting her father (Freddy) drink himself to death and waste his life away that was literally set up for them. Mary and her brother were in fact in the will just not a lump sum, they had a percentage of the leases but that wasn't good enough. This book is more about how she feels her dad was treated poorly and she deserved better.

Written by Trump's niece who saw first-hand the horrible things he did (like make sure his disabled family member wasn't covered) and had someone take the SATs for him. That's how a man who can't finish a sentence got into college at all. Trump has been handed his life on a silver platter, and was handed the presidency by a handful of idiots who thought 'The Apprentice' set was his real office. They will be his sycophantic followers to the end on par with Heaven's Gate or David Koresh, which is why they're already downvoting the book. Very brave of Mary to write a book an give us insight into the biggest failure of a president and human being America has ever seen. Looking forward to reading it, and a real President in 2021.

About the author

Mary L. Trump holds a PhD from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and taught graduate courses in trauma, psychopathology, and developmental psychology. She lives with her daughter in New York.