In fact, this was a 15-by-25 foot nickel Art Deco piece that Trump ordered cut up (and presumably sold).

The Free Library.

Washington Monthly Company 03 Mar.

While reading the 41-year-olds autobiography, I kept hearing Trump issue that wheedling proposal between the smooth, co-written lines on the page.

The book stands as a monument to Trumps enormous shrewdness and self-regard.

Like his other monuments, it bears his name and is decorated in marble and gilt--marble-printed endpapers, a gold-faced jacket that takes longer than the book to manufacture.

He wants a national image, but not the one hes got in New York as a ruthless arriviste.

Moneys status is plainly sinking, and Trump is scrambling for a lifeboat.

It irritates him that architecture critics are accorded cultural esteem while casino operators and real estate developers have litte.

He protests that he doesnt do it for the moolah, but for creative fulfillment.

Ditto, casinos. chapters end with eight-digit sums of what he netted.

The serrated contous of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, Trump informs us, is not some avant-garde architectural conceit, but a means of maximizing windowed walls so he can charge even more for apartments.

In one episode, he rescues an adorable little lady in Georgia from farm foreclosure after her husband commits suicide.

Trump leads a collection for 100,000, then presents the check.

But consider: that farmwoman was Tom Brokaws story; NBC put Trump in touch with her; and while Trump was raising the 100,000, he was urging NBC to relocate its headquarters to his Television City site in New York.

His gift is lining up the many sides of a deal by jiggling provisional commitments.

He avoids risk, seldom tells the whole truth, and likes to put no money down.

By casual feints, he gets people to sign letters of intent they will regret.

Its a craft for the media age--using the press ot panic politicians and rivals.

We see Trump hyping my plans to the press but in reality getting nowhere, or showcasing an ugly as-of-right model of a building in order to say, This is all I could build the way things stand.

By such manipulations, Trump has frequently won big tax breaks from New Yorks politicians.

Manhattan, inc. has pointed out tat his version of what he did to tenants who blocked his plans for a glass tower on Central Park South is mild compared to the ugly reality.

Then theres his apology for destroying the Bonwit buildings prized friezes, which he had promised to the Metropolitan useum of Art.

Trump says preserving the Friezes would have cost him hundreds of thousands in weeks of delays on the Trump Tower--a ridiculous assertion from the man who, in the blink of an eye (and, yes, amazingly) built an iceskating rink that the city government had bungled for more than five years.

Besides, a spokesman said at the time that saving the friezes would have cost 32,000.) Trumps regret over the Bonwit incident (I was too young.) is further undercut by his three-word mention of certain iron grillwork he aso promised the Met.

Trump The Art Of The Deal Mobi