Colin Paul Spears

The major reviews like the NY Times and The Guardian don't seem as if they read the same book that I read, a PDF from Simon & Schuster. The truly remarkable thing about this autobiography is the extraordiinary detail of every day to day events and conversations, names and impressions, as if his entire term was recorded including video. The reader thus becomes an active witness and confidant in the saga of those hectic months. The media would have you believe it is all condemnation of Trump. Quite the contrary, he notes in countless instances where Trump was right or turned out to be correct. His main conflict with Trump was 2-fold: the frequent vacillation in Trump's opinions, and Trump's overwhelming, naive confidence that the answer to the troubles in the world are best approached by isolated top leadership encounter, so he that he can exercise his salesmanship to overcome policy disputes by the sheer power of his personality. That naturally led to his - "I've done you a favor, so now please support me [buy my product]" approach like the aggressive businessman he is. And every page is chocked full of detailed documentation, right up to publication. How Mr. Bolton produced such an astounding document is hard to imagine, but this will become a major reference resource for historians and those studying how the White House and the Federal government work and fail to work. While the media way overemphasizes how Trump is negatively portrayed, Mr. Bolton's comments about the Obama regime are far more critical of the latter's "disastrous policies" in the Middle East especially. Mr. Bolton presents as a classic Cold War era warrior, whose primary concern is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, and Iran's receiving enabling technology from North Korea. And North Korea depends on that income to survive in severe trade embargoes, with Trump thinking that a warm handshake will solve the rifts. From this reader's perspective, there are so many catch-22's, it is hard to fault Mr. Bolton for his clarity of thought and mission of candor regarding Iranian terrorism, in a fully chaotic, dysfunctional and often viciously unprincipled, cunning world and with a very confused and disjointed and horrifying naive American politic.