Breaking history A White House memoir

Jared Kushner, 1981-

Book - 2022

"Few White House advisors have had such an expansive portfolio or constant access to the president. From his office next to Trump, senior adviser Jared Kushner operated quietly behind the scenes, preferring to leave the turf wars and television sparring to others. Now, Kushner finally tells his story--a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account of how an earnest businessman with no political ambitions found himself pulled into a presidency that no one saw coming. Breaking History takes readers inside debates in the Oval Office, double-crosses at the United Nations, tense meetings in Arab palaces, high-stakes negotiations, and the daily barrage of leaks, false allegations, investigations, and West Wing infighting." -- inside fro...nt jacket flap.

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Biographies
Published
New York, NY : Broadside Books [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Jared Kushner, 1981- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xv, 492 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 470-474) and index.
ISBN
9780063221482
  • Preface
  • 1. Sentenced
  • 2. Improbable Existence
  • 3. Making It in Manhattan
  • 4. "Everything Will Be Different"
  • 5. An Unlikely Upset
  • 6. "I Am Your Voice"
  • 7. "We're Going to Win"
  • 8. "I'll Never Get Used to This"
  • 9. Learning on the Job
  • 10. The World Is Watching
  • 11. Riyadh to Rome
  • 12. The Art of War
  • 13. Great Expectations
  • 14. Tear Up the Talking Points
  • 15. Great Power Competition
  • 16. Building Capital
  • 17. Papier-Mâché Wall
  • 18. Fighting for the Forgotten
  • 19. Top Secret
  • 20. The Cost of Peace
  • 21. A Step toward Justice
  • 22. No Time for Triumph
  • 23. "No One Gets Smarter by Talking"
  • 24. USMCA
  • 25. The Zombie Bill
  • 26. Victory and Defeat
  • 27. The Longest Shutdown
  • 28. Eureka
  • 29. A New Cliche
  • 30. Exoneration
  • 31. An Unexpected Visit
  • 32. Mexican Standoff amid Peace Talks
  • 33. Peace to Prosperity
  • 34. The Demilitarized Zone
  • 35. The Enemy from Within
  • 36. Fight to Win
  • 37. Hospital Negotiations
  • 38. Soleimani
  • 39. Bank Shot
  • 40. Chaos and Peace
  • 41. A Vision for Peace
  • 42. The "Misunderstanding"
  • 43. Battle at the United Nations
  • 44. Code Red
  • 45. Battle Rhythm
  • 46. Project Airbridge
  • 47. Life Support
  • 48. On the Brink of Economic Collapse
  • 49. Operation Warp Speed
  • 50. Turmoil
  • 51. Suicide Squeeze
  • 52. The Call That Changed the World
  • 53. First Flight
  • 54. The Abraham Accords
  • 55. From Walter Reed to Election Night
  • 56. Landing Planes on an Aircraft Carrier
  • 57. Pardons, Pfizer, and Peace
  • 58. Reconciliation
  • 59. Hourglass
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The colorless Trump functionary fails to inspire in a look-at-me memoir. "One rule applies to both fathers-in-law and presidents. When they ask for help, there's only one answer: yes." Another rule applies to Kushner's memoir: When it works, he gets the credit; when it doesn't, others are to blame. The author risks dislocating his shoulder patting himself on the back for having "orchestrated some of the most significant breakthroughs in diplomacy in the last fifty years." Naturally, he accomplished these and other feats by learning geopolitics on the fly while facing down a host of opponents single-handedly. When not self-congratulatory--or fawning, when it comes to the man whom he at least calls Trump, usually without the increasingly inappropriate-seeming honorific "President"--Kushner is aggrieved. He opens with an embittered account of his father's prosecution at the hands of attorney Chris Christie for witness tampering and violations against the Mann Act, whereupon Christie "sought to punish my father in a way that would hurt the most: by putting other Kushner…executives in jail, bankrupting the family business, and shutting it down for good." This Kushner secured his revenge by keeping Christie out of the Trump White House, but he's an equal-opportunity hater, both barrels constantly aimed at Steve Bannon--a gossipy morsel is that Bannon, by Kushner's account, "didn't hide his disappointment" when Kellyanne Conway passed a drug test--but also trained on Priebus, Lewandowski, Kelly, Comey, Fauci, and a battery of other well-known names. As for Trump, father to the "arrestingly beautiful" Ivanka, well, he can do no wrong except perhaps to be overly enthusiastic. So, it seems, were those who stormed the Capitol, an event to which Kushner devotes just a couple of cautious, don't-blame-us pages ("no one at the White House expected violence that day"). Bland, dutiful, self-serving, and unconvincing. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.