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      ‘Apprentice in Wonderland’ Review: Ramin Setoodeh Dives Into Trump’s Theatrics

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      APPRENTICE IN WONDERLAND: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, by Ramin SetoodehIn 2004, when the entertainment journalist Ramin Setoodeh was 22, Newsweek assigned him to cover a new reality show starring Donald Trump. The show’s mix of product-hawking and emotional volatility was a hit; and in the years since “The Apprentice” first aired on NBC, Setoodeh would go on to become the co-editor in chief of Variety and Trump, of course, would go on to become president — arguably in large part because American audiences bought the mirage of the successful, no-nonsense businessman that Trump played on TV.So it isn’t surprising that Setoodeh, like so many others who have done rotations in Trump’s orbit, would eventually add a volume to the ever-expanding shelf of Trump books. Setoodeh concedes that “The Apprentice” has already “been endlessly analyzed, debated, referenced and credited as a major factor” in Trump’s 2016 victory, and he promises that “Apprentice in Wonderland” will do something new: “What’s been lost in most of the conversations about the show is the show itself — not just a symbol, but a seminal moment in the history of popular culture.”This is one of those my-book-will-be-different statements that sounds blandly unobjectionable on the face of it, but then turns out not to make much sense. “The Apprentice” was “a seminal moment in the history of popular culture” precisely because its star became president. The “show itself” was, from Setoodeh’s own recounting of it, just another reality television product: addictive, ultra-processed fare that could be churned out on the cheap. Trump’s stint in reality TV has been squeezed many times over for significance. What can this book tell us that we don’t know already?Setoodeh did what he could to gather material. He interviewed Trump six times between May 2021 and November 2023, and talked to numerous people who worked for or appeared on the show. In other words, he had access. But access — especially when it comes to a 20-year-old reality show built around voluble people who crave attention — can yield only so much.Most of what sources confided to Setoodeh are variations on the many stories about “The Apprentice” that have appeared over the years. We have been repeatedly told that Trump was less decisive and articulate than the show’s editors made him out to be, and that he made vulgar comments about women. (Not to mention that he was recently found liable for sexual abuse and defamation by a jury that ordered him to pay his accuser, the writer E. Jean Carroll, $83.3 million.) One “Apprentice” contestant, Jennifer Murphy, says that Trump kissed her, but that she wasn’t offended. “I think he looked at me in a way like he does his daughter,” she tells Setoodeh. “But also, I did think he had the hots for me a little bit.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fans of Charli XCX’s New Album Embrace ‘Brat Summer’

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      Fans of the new Charli XCX album count themselves among them. But the term “brat” has cropped up elsewhere in culture lately, and it has subtly different meanings.Sheer white tank tops. Skinny cigarettes (not vapes). Questionable 3 a.m. decisions.These may be some of the trappings of a “brat,” otherwise known as a fan of the new Charli XCX album by the same name. Its arrival last week ushered in not only a slate of potential songs of the summer, but also an intense identification with the term — and a shift in mind-set.“I think there’s a bravado to Charli’s persona, and that’s often what people see in her and what they’d like to see in themselves,” said Biz Sherbert, a host of “Nymphet Alumni,” a culture podcast. “I think the word ‘brat’ is in on that — wanting things to go your way, being badly behaved or self-centered, acting pouty and having an attitude.”Kelly Chapman, a longtime Charli fan based in Washington, D.C., similarly defined a “brat” as “someone who misbehaves in a cheeky way and doesn’t conform to expectations.”Ms. Chapman, 31, mused that a “brat” summer would involve: “embracing being a woman in your 30s, rejecting expectations, being honest, having fun but making moves, dating a guy from Twitter.”Ever since Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer” five years ago, pop stars and brands, as well as everyday people on social media, have spent each spring competing for the summer’s naming rights. There was the ill-fated Hot Vax Summer, Feral Girl Summer the following year, and of course, most recently, hot pink “Barbie” summer.There were not many contenders on the scene when “Brat” dropped. With its callback to the sweat-stained, mascara-smudged aughts — when singers danced away their pain rather than therapizing it — and its eye-catching toxic-sludge-green album art, “Brat” seemed to fill a gap in the culture.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I Had a Difficult Childhood. It Made Me an Amazing Employee.

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      A writer reflects on the moment she understood the roots of her workaholism.“COME SEE ME AS SOON AS YOU’RE IN,” concludes the flurry of Slack messages from my manager, an all-caps tirade that began at 4:56 a.m.It’s a Monday morning in 2017. I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot of my newish job, my body frozen, my eyes glued to my phone screen.I’m 45, and after decades relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, I’d landed a high-profile, C-suite “dream” job and published my first book, a career guide for misfits. I’d become an in-demand speaker, traveling the country to deliver talks on “making it,” my platitudes-with-a-twist quoted in business magazines, written up in women’s lifestyle blogs.To the outside world, my success was unimpeachable. Inside I am a mess.I’d worked through the weekend and, because I worked most weekends, the days and demands had all started to blur. My husband and I had moved to Los Angeles five years earlier, but I still hadn’t made any friends.I’d skipped the parent social at our kid’s new preschool because of a work trip. I’d turned down an invitation to a neighbor’s potluck because I knew I’d be at the office late, and had said “no” to enough coffee requests from the few people I knew in the city that eventually they stopped asking. Instead of putting in the effort required to build a community, I spent nearly all of my energy in service of my career.The Slack messages are followed in short order by three calls from my boss’s assistant. When I don’t pick up, the accompanying voice messages, each more frantic than the last, remind me that our boss wishes to see me, post haste. The crisis, like most work crises, does not warrant this level of urgency. But it feels like a five-alarm fire to me.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can You Uncover the 14 Hidden Book Titles Hidden in This Quiz?

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      The memory Police Officer 6311 told her to forget will not fade, even now in the silence. She looks at the plastic clock on the stand beside the bed, pulls the tattered wool blanket tighter and tries to organize her thoughts before she sleeps. The departure tomorrow has been hastily planned, but she knows the coded phrases she must speak to the guard to get by the Station Eleven checkpoint. When she gets beyond the wall and out of Zone One, she must find the road marked by the Children of Men resistance group and she will be on her way to paradise — or at least what’s left of it.The memory Police Officer 6311 told her to forget will not fade, even now in the silence. She looks at the plastic clock on the stand beside the bed, pulls the tattered wool blanket tighter and tries to organize her thoughts before she sleeps. The departure tomorrow has been hastily planned, but she knows the coded phrases she must speak to the guard to get by the Station Eleven checkpoint. When she gets beyond the wall and out of Zone One, she must find the road marked by the Children of Men resistance group and she will be on her way to paradise — or at least what’s left of it.The memory Police Officer 6311 told her to forget will not fade, even now in the silence. She looks at the plastic clock on the stand beside the bed, pulls the tattered wool blanket tighter and tries to organize her thoughts before she sleeps. The departure tomorrow has been hastily planned, but she knows the coded phrases she must speak to the guard to get by the Station Eleven checkpoint. When she gets beyond the wall and out of Zone One, she must find the road marked by the Children of Men resistance group and she will be on her way to paradise — or at least what’s left of it. More

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      Jürgen Moltmann, Who Reconciled Religion With Suffering, Dies at 98

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      Considered one of the leading Christian theologians of the 20th century, he insisted that any established set of beliefs had to confront the implications of Auschwitz.Jürgen Moltmann, who drew on his searing experiences as a German soldier during World War II to construct transformative ideas about God, Jesus and salvation in a fallen world, making him one of the leading Protestant theologians of the 20th century, died on Monday at his home in Tübingen, in southwest Germany. He was 98.His daughter Anne-Ruth Moltmann-Willisch confirmed the death.Dr. Moltmann, who spent most of his career as a professor at the University of Tübingen, played a central role in Christianity’s struggle to come to grips with the Nazi era, insisting that any established set of beliefs had to confront the theological implications of Auschwitz.As a teenage conscript in the German Army, he barely escaped death during an Allied bombing raid on Hamburg in 1943. The horrors of the war led him to chart a path between those who insisted that faith was now meaningless and those who wanted a return to the doctrines of the past as if the Nazi era had never occurred.Though his work ranged widely, including ecological and feminist theology, he specialized in the branch of theology known as eschatology, which is concerned with the disposition of the soul after death and the end of the world, when Christians believe that Christ will return to earth.Dr. Moltmann outlined his eschatology, and established his reputation, with a trilogy of books, beginning with “The Theology of Hope” in 1964.“Theology of Hope” (1964), the first book in a trilogy, established Dr. Moltmann’s reputation.Fortress PressDr. Moltmann’s next work, “The Crucified God” (1972), tackled the question: Does God suffer, or, as the all-powerful being, is he incapable of experiencing pain and sorrow?Fortress PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scare Easily? These 2 Thrillers Are Worth It.

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      Complicated sisters; messy neighbors.Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty ImagesDear readers,What I admire about the thrillers I recommend today (and I say this as someone so skittish that I read Henry James with a paw clamped over one eye): They give you no chance to chicken out. You are indicted as a co-conspirator on the first page.These books waste no time and neither will I. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.—Joumana, lifelong wimp“My Sister, the Serial Killer,” by Oyinkan BraithwaitheFiction, 2018“Ayoola summons me with these words — Korede, I killed him.“I had hoped I would never hear those words again.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A New ‘Hunger Games’ Book by Suzanne Collins Is Coming in 2025

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      “Sunrise on the Reaping” is the latest book in Collins’s hit series, which generated a legion of fans. It will also be made into a movie.Sixteen years ago, the writer Suzanne Collins first brought readers a dystopian world in which young people fought gladiator-style to their deaths, creating a best-selling series that spawned a global following and a multibillion-dollar movie franchise.Now Ms. Collins is at it again, with a prequel that takes place decades before the original “Hunger Games” book.Scholastic announced on Thursday that the book, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” would publish on March 18, 2025.“Sunrise on the Reaping” will also be adapted into a film, set to be released on Nov. 20, 2026, and produced by Lionsgate, the studio behind the film adaptations of Ms. Collins’s other “Hunger Games” books.“Welcome to the Second Quarter Quell,” a post by The Hunger Games, the film series’ official account, said on social media.According to Scholastic, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” will take readers back to Panem, a postapocalyptic land made up of 12 districts that was once North America but was destroyed by war and climate change. The action begins on the morning of the reaping (the event in which participants are chosen from each district) of the 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell. The book is set 24 years before the events of the first “Hunger Games” novel.In a statement published on Thursday, Ms. Collins said she was inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume’s “ideas on implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.’”“The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative,” Ms. Collins said. “The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”The “Hunger Games” is the first book in a trilogy that came out in 2008. The series also includes “Catching Fire,” the second book, published in 2009, and “Mockingjay,” her third installment, released in 2010.In 2015, Ms. Collins said she was stepping away from “Hunger Games” after her third book, telling fans, “Having spent the last decade in Panem, it’s time to move on to other lands.” But Ms. Collins picked her pen up again and published the series’s fourth book, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” in 2020.The first four books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 50 languages, according to Scholastic. They have also been made into five feature films. The series attracted a legion of fans, drawn in large part to its defiant teenage heroine, Katniss Everdeen, portrayed in the movies by Jennifer Lawrence, with her long braid, bow and arrow, sense of loyalty and commitment to justice. More

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      Book Review: ‘There Is No Ethan,’ by Anna Akbari

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      Reading Anna Akbari’s memoir of online manipulation, you think you’ve seen it all — then you keep reading.THERE IS NO ETHAN: How Three Women Caught America’s Biggest Catfish, by Anna AkbariI did not expect to be shocked by “There Is No Ethan.” Online deception has become so ubiquitous that it’s boring. By now, the term “catfish,” which was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a decade ago, seems almost quaint. But the twists and turns in Anna Akbari’s book are outrageous. I read it in one sitting, then spent days recounting her story to anyone who would listen, unable to shake off my indignation on behalf of the author and her fellow victims.The book begins in late 2010, when someone presenting himself as Ethan first messages Akbari, a sociologist teaching at New York University, on the online dating site OKCupid. Ethan’s photos are “approachably attractive” and his credentials seem impeccable: a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from M.I.T., a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, an exciting (albeit mysterious) job that involves working for both Morgan Stanley and the U.S. government that he describes as “stealing from the rich.” Akbari is most drawn to Ethan’s “eagerness to keep the conversation going.” A persistent and intuitive communicator, Ethan stands out among the city’s innumerable self-absorbed and flaky men. For weeks, they message each other nonstop.But Ethan’s excuses for why he can’t meet in person grow increasingly implausible: first work, then weather, then a horrifying cancer diagnosis. When Akbari starts fact-checking and finds holes everywhere, Ethan chastises her: “You obviously distrust me right now, and when I’m going through such an ordeal, that’s really the last thing I need on my plate.” She wants to extricate herself but finds it impossible to ignore him; Ethan even persuades her to have cybersex. He offers to pay her rent. He asks her to go away with him for the weekend. When Akbari finally stops responding, she feels awful for abandoning Ethan before he has started chemotherapy.Then Akbari connects with two other women whose (simultaneous) relationships with Ethan mirror her own. Soon she begins hearing from more of his victims, all professionals in their 30s. Ethan has strung some of them along for years.Language is his weapon of choice, Akbari writes, “persuading and emotionally manipulating women with attention, affection and the promise of love and companionship because the thing many women, especially high-achieving women, lack most in this digital age — far more than access to money or sex — is meaningful romantic companionship.” Ethan’s victims have convinced themselves that he is real — and really cares for them — because he doesn’t reap any financial or physical sexual gain. He demands nothing except for, in one woman’s paraphrased words, “her time, openness and emotional vulnerability.”Through some clever sleuthing (and an eerily portentous dream) the group discovers Ethan’s real identity. He isn’t a typical catfisher, a “wannabe influencer,” as Akbari puts it, but instead a “highly educated overachiever” with multiple Ivy League degrees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More