This the most recent of Woodward’s books about the presidency of Donald Trump. While nearly every interview I’d seen about it focused on Trump, the book is actually pretty evenly split between Trump and his election opponent-current President Joe Biden. Another false impression I got from the interviews was that the book also focused on the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. While it does talk about it and the forces behind it, it is a relatively small portion of the overall book.

The book does spend a lot of time covering Trump’s baseless allegations of voting irregularities in the 2020 election and his attempts to remain in office despite losing the election by seven million votes nationwide. The sections on Biden go back to the reasons he chose to run for President back in 2019, his struggles in the primaries, his campaign strategy. After becoming President-elect, it traces the evolution of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, stimulating the economy, and other issues.

The book’s epilogue speculates about whether the January insurrection was an isolated event or a preview of more trials to come and details Trump’s efforts to maintain relevance in hopes of regaining the Presidency in 2024. The book’s final sentence is short, but alarming: “Peril remains.” It certainly does.

I gave Peril four stars. It seemed to me that the book contained a lot of filler information that strayed from the major theme of the book.