The Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of of Donald J. Trump

(maybe even more) Knowing my strange fascination with all things Trump, a friend and fellow librarian gave me a copy of this 1993 book after her own library weeded it from the biography section. Somehow I'd missed it during my quest to read any books by or about Donald J. Trump. I can't thank my friend enough, though the outcome surely does not match her expectations. This book has scared me straight, so to speak, and has turned me against the man, seemingly forever. When Harry Hurt III compiled his copious notes for this publication, he had only Trump's real estate deals of the 1980s and early 1990s to draw upon. But add those to the complexities caused by DT's overlapping relationships with Ivana Trump and Marla Maples, and the result reads like a blow-by-blow scorecard of crimes and misdemeanors. Here are the details of his early exploits in the real estate markets of both Manhattan and Atlantic City. Here are all of the negotiations he made with literally dozens (if not hundreds) of banks, using presumed building equity and future potential worth to ensure repayment of the loans. Or maybe not. Here are skazillions of false rumors deliberately leaked to the media in an effort to generate publicity of any kind. Add concrete contracts with mob-related outfits and the intricate and lawful demands of the New Jersey Gaming Commission, and you've got the prime ingredients for a made-for-TV movie. Or perhaps a Sopranos episode. And that's not even including the days spent arguing over the terms of a nuptial agreement of a marriage that's quickly heading south. And Hurt didn't even have to invent any of it. Just his presentation of the facts is enough to set our heads a-shaking. The dollar amounts involved will do that, as you might expect. Subsequent Trump biographers have covered many of these endeavors, but not necessarily in such detail. Self-professed real estate moguls have lives that can only be described as exceedingly complex. We who reside in the trenches can breathe sighs of relief as we turn these pages, knowing we'll never have to deal with such Trump-sized issues. We'll never have to fight business battles in courtrooms or have our most intimate moments scrutinized in gossip columns or in front page photos. Hurt mentions a few personal items I don't recall coming across in other books: the fact that DT used both liposuction and diet pills to get rid of some extra poundage, and that he had scalp reduction surgery in order to remedy his hair loss. A decade and a half later, we can pretty much judge how successful those attempts at physical improvement were. But something that stands out is the number of times Trump's then-total worth is projected and questioned in this book. DT always claims it's more than a billion dollars; Hurt and his sources calculate that the amount is far, far less and has always been far, far less. I don't recall (and can find no retrospective proof) that Donald Trump sued Harry Hurt III fo