Trump and me

In 1996, New Yorker writer Mark Singer was conscripted by his editor to profile Donald Trump, at a time when the Republican frontrunner was just a Manhattan-centric megalomaniac and failing casino operator mired in his second divorce.

After spending months with Trump in his office towers, penthouse apartment, and private plane, Singer found himself fascinated with this man "who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul."Since then, Trump has become a serious candidate in the US presidential race, an unlikely tribune of populist rage that has resulted in a mass political movement only loosely tethered to reality.

Yet Singer's droll and precise profile has lodged inside Trump's head as a continuing irritant - and it's not hard to see why.

In TRUMP AND ME, Singer revisits his former subject and outlines his evolution from swaggering buffoon to Republican nominee in one of the most bizarre and alarming elections in American history.