Amazon is hawking Jared Kushner's "Breaking History" — due out 23 August — as a "must-read," "a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account," and "a true historical thriller." The memoir "provides the most honest, nuanced, and definitive understanding of a presidency that will be studied for generations," says Jeff Bezos' website.
This is doubtful. What is certain to be studied instead are the innumerable trashings of Kushner's musings, beginning with that of The NY Times' long-serving book critic, Dwight Garner. There are bad reviews and there are harsh reviews, but Garner's is a splendidly unique work of bilious force and merited hostility. It will also save readers $35 and hours of 500-page agony.
Garner opens his "Breaking History" review with a reflection on the volume's title, which "in its thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness, matches this book’s contents. Kushner writes as if he believes foreign dignitaries (and less-than dignitaries) prized him in the White House because he was the fresh ideas guy, the starting point guard, the dimpled go-getter. He betrays little cognizance that he was in demand because, as a landslide of other reporting has demonstrated, he was in over his head, unable to curb his avarice."
We were of course aware of America's most famous son-in-law's overabundance of self-regard, but somewhat unaware of his outright self-deification. Observes Garner: "Kushner, poignantly, repeatedly beats his own drum. He recalls every drop of praise he’s ever received....
"You turn the pages and find, almost at random, colleagues, some of them famous, trying to be kind, uttering things like [in part]: 'I don’t know how you do this every day on so many topics. That was really hard! You deserve an award for all you’ve done' ... 'I’ve said before, and I’ll say again. This agreement would not have happened if it wasn’t for Jared' ... 'Jared’s a genius. People complain about nepotism — I’m the one who got the steal here.'"
But Garner's the one with the final word: "A therapist might call these cries for help."
Suffering through more of the memoir's idiosyncratic cluelessness, the critic notes that "Breaking History" is "soulless" — a fitting description of the criminal Trump family's members and, in legal terminology, any who knowingly and willfully married into the family. "Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — [providing a] peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office," writes Garner. "Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum....
"Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.... Once in the White House, Kushner became Little Jack Horner, placing a thumb in everyone else’s pie, and he wonders why he was disliked. He read Sun Tzu and imagined he was becoming a warrior. It was because he had Trump’s ear, however, that he won nearly every time he locked antlers with a rival."
Continues Garner: "Kushner was pleased that the other adults in the room, including the White House chie of staff Reince Priebus, the White House counsel Don McGahn and the later chief of staff John Kelly, left or were ejected because they tried, patriotically, to exclude him from meetings he shouldn’t have been in."
Of his subject's eternal immaturity, Garner writes: "The tone is college admissions essay. Typical sentence: 'In an environment of maximum pressure, I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push for results that would improve lives.' Every political cliché gets a fresh shampooing.... There’s a page or two about Kushner’s time at Harvard. He omits the fact that he was admitted after his father pledged $2.5 million to the college. If Kushner can recall a professor or a book that influenced him while in Cambridge, he doesn’t say. Instead, he recalls doing his first real estate deals while there."
Garner also notes that the book appears to lack marketability. "[Kushner is] a pair of dimples without a demographic.... You finish 'Breaking History' wondering: Who is this book for? There’s not enough red meat for the MAGA crowd, and Kushner has never appealed to them anyway."
Perhaps Son-in-Law's memoir will at least be cherished by students of abnormal psychology. "What a queasy-making book to have in your hands. Once someone has happily worked alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this country’s history, how can anyone be expected to believe a word they say?"
Kushner's literary effort required a ghostwriter — Trump and Ted Cruz speechwriter Brittany Baldwin — a foreseeable employment, given his Father-in-Law-like obsession with self-aggrandizement over the practice of organized thought. He mentions this only in the acknowledgments. The indispensable Literary Hub reminds us that "Breaking History"'s publisher, Broadside Books, is "a lamentable neocon imprint of Harper Collins which boasts a stable full of prize grievance ponies like Charlie Kirk, Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, and Dinesh D’Souza." Citing Mr. D.D. alone would have alerted us to Broadside's subliteracy bottom-feeding.
In closing, I'll venture there's one good thing that can be said about Jared Kushner's "Breaking History." This memoir of a bumbling ninny inspired the Times' Dwight Garner to pen an altogether enjoyable, brutally bad review.