A tell-all memoir written by President Donald Trump’s niece – who accuses him of being a narcissist whose world-endangering emotional problems stem from childhood trauma inflicted by his parents – has sold 1.35 million copies in its first week, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.
Mary Trump’s “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” is on its 17th printing, the publisher said in a release on Wednesday. It has been sold in five different languages. The sales figure, which includes all formats, put the book on track to being one of the most popular books of the year.
“Mary Trump’s memoir has transcended the usual ceiling for political books to reach a larger audience of people who want to read stories about unusual families,” Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp said in a statement.
The publisher said the book was ranked No. 1 in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and No. 2 in Australia.
The memoir was published ahead of schedule after litigation brought by the president’s brother, Robert Trump, failed to halt its release. Simon & Schuster said it published the book early because of extraordinary demand.
In the memoir, Mary Trump, trained as a clinical psychologist, writes that the president’s father, Fred, “perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it.”
Mary Trump also accused Trump of paying someone else to take his SATs while in high school.
“Lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was,” she writes.
The White House has said that the allegations in the book are false. A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the book’s sales.
Books written by those critical of the president have effectively spawned their own genre, with many coming from former members of his administration. But Mary Trump’s book is unique in that it was written by a family member. It also appears to have outdone many of the previous books’ sales figures.
Earlier this month, Simon & Schuster said that a book written by former national security advisor John Bolton, “The Room Where it Happened,” sold 780,000 copies in all formats in its first week on sale.
Former FBI director James Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” sold about 600,000 copies in its first week on sale in 2018.
Both of those books were relative blockbusters, compared to other political memoirs.
For instance, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened,” which detailed her loss to Trump in 2016, was considered a success after selling about 300,000 copies in its first week in all formats.
