Rage is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest. Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans. In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.” At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.” Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

ボブ・ウッドワードが描く本作は、権力の深淵で蠢く人間の生々しいドキュメントです。十七回に及ぶ対話から立ち上がるのは、未曾有の危機を前に虚勢と不安の狭間で揺れ動く指導者の剥き出しの肖像であり、読者は大統領執務室の片隅で歴史の奔流を直に目撃するような錯覚に陥るでしょう。 金正恩との幻想的な書簡や、危機を一蹴する言葉に宿る奇妙なリアリズムこそが本作の文学的真髄です。国家の命運と個人の本能が衝突する瞬間の緊迫感を、緻密な取材で浮き彫りにした本作は、現代の混迷を解き明かす一級の人間ドラマとして、読者の知的好奇心を激しく揺さぶります。