Trump: The Art of the Deal.

• Author: Weiss, Philip

Trump: The Art of the Deal.

While reading the 41-year-old's 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 Trump's 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. This is a book you can tell by its cover. Trump is showing off what he's worth and thereby advertising the saddest effect of pure capitalism on personality: the person as product. And now Trump is selling to a larger market. He wants a national image, but not the one he's got in New York as a ruthless arriviste.

Among other things, trump wants to be considered an artist. Money's 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 doesn't do it for the moolah, but for creative fulfillment. "Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals," he writes at the start.

The stories that follow don't exactly bolster Trump's case. "The relevant issue ... [is] what I get to keep," he says. Or, "skyscrappers are machines for making money." 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.

Even when Trump's giving it away he's tryping to make it. 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 Brokaw's 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. The whole foreclosure charade was a way of impressing NBC. No dice; NBC stayed in condo-less Rockefeller Plaza.

Trump's no artist, he's artful. 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. He can employ strongarm pressure or back off laughing. By casual...