TL;DR
Donald Trump’s 1987 business memoir, written with journalist Tony Schwartz. It spent 13 weeks at number one on the New York Times list and did more to build a public image than any real estate deal could. It’s also a famous example of a book written with a collaborator.
Few books show what a book can do for a reputation as clearly as this one. In 1987 Donald Trump was a well-known New York developer. After The Art of the Deal, he was a national figure, the embodiment of the successful businessman to millions of people who had never been to New York.
The book did that. A building can’t.
What is The Art of the Deal about?
It opens with a week in Trump’s life, phone call by phone call, meeting by meeting, to show the reader how he works. Then it lays out his rules for dealmaking: think big, protect the downside, know your market, use publicity and fight back when you’re pushed. The rest is the stories of the deals themselves.
The tone is confident from start to finish, and the voice is so specific that readers came away feeling they’d spent a week in the office with him. Plenty of people who never agreed with him on anything can still quote a line from it.
Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. The renovation of the Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central. The casinos in Atlantic City. And the Wollman Rink in Central Park. The city had spent six years and millions of dollars failing to rebuild it, and Trump’s company finished it in a few months under budget. The rink reopened in November 1986, in time for the skating season, and the story of the city’s six years against Trump’s few months made headlines well beyond New York. That chapter is the one readers remember.
Who wrote The Art of the Deal?
Tony Schwartz, a magazine journalist. His name is on the cover with Trump’s. He received a reported $250,000 advance and half the royalties.
He spent about eighteen months following Trump, listening in on calls and sitting in on meetings to capture the voice.
Schwartz later spoke publicly about the book. In 2016 he said writing it was his greatest regret, and he donated his royalties from that year to charity. Trump has said the book is his. The arrangement, a subject with a famous name and a professional writer doing the drafting, is the most common one in publishing.
How successful was The Art of the Deal?
Random House printed 150,000 copies in the first run, and it wasn’t enough. The book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, stayed there for thirteen weeks and spent forty-eight weeks on the list in all.
It has sold over a million copies.
Why does The Art of the Deal matter to anyone thinking about a book?
Because it shows the reach. A business book with a strong voice and a clear persona can define a person in public for decades, longer than any project it describes. That’s true whatever anyone thinks of the subject.
It’s also a famous case in the history of ghostwriting, and a useful one to study. The voice is consistent from first page to last. The stories are told in scenes. And the persona is so sharp that readers still quote it.
Keep reading
Donald Trump’s ghostwriter proves the power of a book: how a 1987 business book shaped a public image for decades.
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