Michael Kruse writes:

Donald Trump is the damaged product of an absent mother and a sociopathic father.

That’s in essence Mary Trump’s assessment in her ultra-anticipated instant bestseller that’s due out Tuesday—Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

For anybody who’s done the reading these last five years—from Wayne Barrett’s biography that was published in 1992 to Gwenda Blair’s multigenerational study from 2000 to psychology experts’ more recent efforts to explain this president—it’s a takeaway that’s not altogether unfamiliar. And the glut of books about Trump and his aberrant administration has contributed almost inevitably to a tendency to treat even the most hyped fresh releases as cash-grab ephemera to speed-read for damning tidbits and just as quickly forget amid the ruthless whirl of crises.

But hold up here for a sec—for the most devastating, most valuable and all-around best Trump book since he started running for president. In the vast Trump literature, this one is something new.

That’s because of the unprecedented access, and its pathos, which is because of the source—the president’s only niece, the 55-year-old daughter of his oldest brother, who died at 42 in 1981 in her estimation as a result of a pathological, decades-long destruction at the hands of his own twisted kin. [Continue reading…]