Fear: Trump in the White House
2018 non-fiction book by Bob Woodward about Donald Trump's presidency
Fear: Trump in the White House is a nonfiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the first presidency of Donald Trump. The book was released on September 11, 2018. Woodward based the book on hundreds of hours of interviews with members of the Trump administration. The book's publisher Simon & Schuster announced that it had sold 1.1 million copies (across all formats) in the first week of its release, making it the fastest selling opener in the company's history.
Background
Best known for his role exposing the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency, Bob Woodward was described by Rolling Stone's Ryan Bort as "one of the most revered and well-respected journalists in American history." Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting of that scandal earned The Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize and turned them into "the most heralded U.S. investigative journalists ever," according to Nick Allen of The Daily Telegraph. In his books on American presidents such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, Allen writes that Woodward, with "relentless and methodical reporting," "has harvested a level of detail on the internal workings of various White House administrations that no other writer can match." BBC News' Nick Bryant describes Woodward as "Washington's chronicler in chief", "one of America's most trusted journalists" and "the opposite of sensationalist."
In 2013, during a dispute between Woodward and the Obama administration regarding budget cuts, Donald Trump commented: "Only the Obama [White House] can get away with attacking Bob Woodward."
On July 30, 2018, CNN reported that anonymous sources told them that a well-sourced book on the Trump Administration by Woodward would be published on September 11, 2018. Woodward said that the book's title is based on a quote by Trump in an unrelated 2016 interview: "Real power is, I don't even want to use the word, fear."
According to a September 4, 2018, article in The New York Times, the book is based on "hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, contemporaneous meeting notes, files, documents and personal diaries." Woodward taped his interviews. Woodward's research assistant was Evelyn Duffy, who also transcribed the recordings.
The editor for the book was Alice Mayhew. Bob Woodward has been working with Alice Mayhew since 1974 when she was the editor for All the President's Men and this was their 19th book together.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Fear: Trump in the White House” is 2018 non-fiction book by Bob Woodward about Donald Trump's presidency. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Fear, Trump and White, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2018 non-fiction book by Bob Woodward about Donald Trump's presidency” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q56477048. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2013, 2016 and 1974.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Fear: Trump in the White House”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Fear: Trump in the White House primary sources, Fear: Trump in the White House archive and Fear research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fear: Trump in the White House”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Fear: Trump in the White House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.