ADVANCE PRAISE FOR VIRUS
"Some day, movies will be made about the political chaos and collective insanity of America during the 2020 pandemic. Until then, we have Virus, an action packed, information rich, rapid-fire recount- ing of an incompetent government, a terrified citizenry, and medical research in hyperdrive despite a healthcare system in shambles. Nina Burleigh is a tireless reporter and a dazzling storyteller. This book had me in its grip on every page and left me knowing more than I ever thought I could know -- in- cluding how much we have yet to understand."
-- Meghan Daum, author of The Problem With Everything: My Journey Though The New Culture Wars
"Nina Burleigh has written a riveting, big-picture account of the unfolding of the pandemic in Ameri- ca. She shows how the spread of conspiracy theories, the Trump administration's favoring of ideology and nativism over science and international collaboration, and an anti-public welfare mindset among influential right-wing billionaires produced this tragedy. Essential and timely reading."
--Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History at New York University and bestselling author of Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present
A few months before the virus slammed the world, global public health experts declared the United States the most prepared for a possible pandemic. Instead, we watched as the disease killed half a
million Americans. A stunned nation has been too busy grieving and doing damage control to ask why, or to comprehend just how much of the blundering and chaos of the pandemic response was either deliberate or entirely predictable. New York Times bestselling author Nina Burleigh weaves together the key
narrative strands to create an uncompromising and highly informed expose about our shared global pandemic experience and what it means for our future. Here readers will learn:
• How the Trump administration packed public health agencies with right wing Christians and their political allies who cared more about gender norms and policing morality than a possible pandemic.
• How another branch of the Trump administration, the anti-government ideologues, were so enamored of extreme free market principles that they treated the pandemic as a business opportunity.
• How America's anti-expertise culture, long nurtured by right wing media and conservative politicians, and now at its apogee, has left countless millions of Americans doubting the efficacy and safety of
vaccines.
• How the phenomenal success of childhood vaccines on extending average lifespan since the early 20th century has left many Americans so ignorant about how much vaccines have already improved their lives that they're willing to reject them.
• How our metastasizing national security state and the "bad science" of the Cold War from the A-bomb to bioweapons and beyond explains the credulity of vast numbers of Americans who subscribe to wild conspiracy theories about Covid.
• How a growing number of mainstream scientists now actually accept the "lab leak hypothesis" about the origins of the virus.
The Trump Women: Part of the Deal
Now in paperback
Publishers Weekly: "Entertaining and Evocative"
President Trump's wives and daughters languish--and, occasionally, thrive--in luxurious bondage to his ego, according to this gossipy group portrait. Newsweek writer Burleigh focuses on six women of "Trumplandia" and their relationships with the billionaire: his grandmother Elisabeth, from whom Burleigh speculates he got germ phobias and racism; his mother, Mary, who bequeathed him her tacky, extravagant tastes; first wife Ivana, whom he divorced for evolving from glamorous trophy wife to hard-headed businesswoman; second wife Marla, who bridled at the glamorous trophy wife image; current wife Melania, content as a glamorous trophy wife but, Burleigh suggests, humiliated and morose over Trump's womanizing and her awkward first lady role; and daughter Ivanka, who gives a classy, insincere polish to Trump's callous politics. Burleigh's narrative is dishy fun, replete with fashion and decor, fights, sex scandals, Trump's incomparable boorishness (whether he's publicly upbraiding a wife or bragging about his daughter's sexual allure), and wry, catty prose. (She describes a postbreakup Marla "appearing in public shorn, in flat shoes, without makeup, like Joan of Arc heading for the pyre.") Burleigh's amateur psychoanalysis and insinuations that these women have sold their souls to become Trumpian "brand extensions" can seem facile, but her account of life in Trump's gilded cage is entertaining and evocative. (Oct.)
KIRKUS
"A comprehensive exposé"
A veteran reporter offers an in-depth investigative report on the six most important women in Donald Trump's life and then branches out to explain how a few dozen other women have affected his path to the presidency.
Some of the results of Burleigh's (The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox, 2011, etc.) extensive research have been revealed previously in Newsweek, where she is the national politics correspondent. Combining shoe-leather reporting in Europe as well as the United States, official documents, secondary sources, and informed speculation, the author provides separate chapters on each of the six women: Trump's grandmother, an immigrant from Germany; his mother, an immigrant from Scotland; his two immigrant wives, from Czechoslovakia (Ivana) and Slovenia (Melania), and his American-born wife, Marla Maples; and his eldest daughter, Ivanka. Burleigh rarely employs neutral language or on-one-hand/on-the-other accounts. Rather, when the evidence warrants it, she labels Trump a liar, manipulator, cheater, and misogynist. The author acknowledges that her opinions about Trump "leak through" on some pages, but she offers no apologies for what many readers are likely to find refreshingly straightforward language. Regarding Trump's grandmother and mother, both deceased, Burleigh summarizes their influences on Donald as hygienic (hence his germophobia) attempts at instilling propriety and--in his mother's case especially--a drive for a royal lifestyle. The author gives credit to Trump's grandmother for her business acumen despite Donald's efforts to erase that legacy from official family histories. In the epilogue, Burleigh discusses the relationships between Donald and his two low-profile sisters; between Donald and his lower-profile daughter, Tiffany; among Donald and five mostly loyal, talented Trump Organization employees; and among Donald and various mostly consensual mistresses as well as 11 of the 19 women who have accused him of sexual assault.
A comprehensive exposé that will engender strong reactions from the vast majority of readers regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox
Now In PaperbackReviews:
""Clear-eyed, sweeping, honest and tough, Nina Burleigh's autopsy of one of the most compelling criminal dramas of our time sets a standard that any of the other other chroniclers of this tale have yet to meet. The story of Amanda Knox is part Salem witch trial, part cultural misunderstanding of an epic sort, and part vendetta. Burleigh found the universal elements of a junior year abroad that shook the world, and she brings them home without sentimentality nor an axe to grind. This is what long-form narrative journalism is all about." -- Tim Egan, New York Times
"THE FATAL GIFT OF BEAUTY is the real, the true, and the complete story of the Amanda Knox case. It will draw you into a nightmare world of murder, conspiracy, corruption, false accusations, police incompetence, abuse, lies, and manipulations. Nina Burleigh is a first-rate journalist who presents a meticulously researched and reported account, with every fact documented and sourced. It is an essential read for anyone interested in this case. More than a murder story, is a look into the dark and complex soul of Italy itself."--Douglas Preston, co-author of The Monster of Florence
"Finally, the twisted tale of Amanda Knox, the all-American college girl convicted of murder in Italy, gets the telling this extraordinary story deserves. Nina Burleigh's immersion in Italian cultural history provides a context that allows us--first the first time--to understand how this international miscarriage of justice could have occurred. Stirring, compelling, and in the end a tragic tale worthy of Italian opera." --Joe McGinniss, author of Fatal Vision, The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro and The Rogue
"The global media, in its frenzied coverage of the sensational Amanda Knox murder trial, overlooked what Nina Burleigh has skillfully unearthed and analyzed--a compelling chain of evidence, subtle levels of significance. Her telling of the tale is clearly the only one that gets it right."--John Berendt, author of The City of Falling Angels and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
"Nina Burleigh has cut through the confusion of conflicting and often inaccurate news accounts of the Amanda Knox murder case and given us a lucid, fair-minded account of the case. She shows, quite convincingly, that Knox and her co-defendant have been victims of a serious miscarriage of justice. Perhaps more importantly, she explains why, showing the case to be the product of cultural misunderstanding between Italy and the U.S."--Alexander Stille, author of The Sack of Rome
"[In] this powerful example of narrative non-fiction...Burleigh, who parses how the Knox trial was perhaps tainted, still presents a fair and unbiased portrait of a girl adrift in a foreign legal system and a culture rife with preconceptions about young American women." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Burleigh's propulsive narrative and the many unsettling aspects of the case make this a standout among recent true-crime titles."--Kirkus Reviews
"Journalist/author Burleigh (e.g., Unholy Business) reconstructs a murder case that has proved to be about much more than murder."--Library Journal
