THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The story Unger weaves with those earlier accounts and his original reporting is fresh illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier.The Washington Post House of Trump House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decadeslong relationship among Donald Trump Vladimir Putin and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s when Trump made his first splash in the booming moneydrenched world of New York real estate and ends with Trumps inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putins long mission to undermine Western democracy a mission that he and his handselected group of oligarchs and Mafia kingpins had ensnared Trump in starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most it will be a hairraising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991that it merely evolved with Trumps apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump House of Putin Craig Unger methodically traces the deeprooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trumps sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russias phoenix like rise from the ashes of the postCold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial t