Why am I passionate about this?

I am an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice who came of age in the 1960s at the UC Berkeley School of Criminology where I developed a passion for the administration of criminal justice and the securing of human rights. I have authored more than 20 books, including five award winning titles such as: Criminology on Trump (2022) and Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy (2024). My third book to complete the Trump trilogy is underway, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power.


I wrote...

Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy

By Gregg Barak ,

Book cover of Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy

What is my book about?

This is a sequel to Criminology on Trump in real time, continuing the criminological investigation into the former US president.…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Making of Donald Trump

Gregg Barak Why I love this book

The winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting, David Cay Johnston is also a specialist in social inequality, political economy, and taxation who has written several best-selling books on these topics, such as Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill. Johnston has interviewed Trump and has been investigating Donald since the late 1980s.

This book was the first and most inclusive overview of Trump’s shady business career in real estate, highlighting his six casino and hotel bankruptcies in the 1990s and up to his run for the presidency in 2016.

By David Cay Johnston ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Making of Donald Trump as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER that connects the dots from Donald Trump's racist background to the Russian scandals

"A searing indictment." — Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Johnston has given us this year's must-read Trump book." — Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell

The international bestseller that brought Trump's long history of racism, mafia ties, and shady business dealings into the limelight. Now with a new introduction and epilogue.
 
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who had spent thirty years chronicling Donald Trump for the New York Times and other leading newspapers, takes…


Book cover of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

Gregg Barak Why I love this book

Not only is Mary L. Trump a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, but she also spent much of her childhood hanging out at her grandparents’ home in Queens, New York, where the president grew up with his four siblings.

Mary has the inside scoop, bringing the reader into several dysfunctional family events, including holiday meals. And she reveals the interfamilial patterns of abuse and neglect that helped shape the polarizing sociopath who now threatens the United States and the world’s well-being and economic security.

By Mary L. Trump ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Too Much and Never Enough as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

* THE INTERNATIONAL AND SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER *
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who threatened the world's health, economic security and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships…


Book cover of Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

Gregg Barak Why I love this book

Who better to tell the inside story about the racketeer-in-chief than Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen, who for 10 years would have taken a bullet for Donald? Attorney Cohen’s betrayal and insider account of his former Boss is the most informative for understanding Trump’s modus operandi of lawlessness, corruption, and greed.

It also explains how the fraudster-in-chief mafioso style grifted and colluded his way to the White House in 2017.

By Michael Cohen ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Disloyal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A #1 New York Times Bestseller!

"I read it cover-to-cover. I did not intend to, but I started at the beginning and didn't put it down until it was over."-Rachel Maddow, MSNBC

This book almost didn't see the light of day as government officials tried to bar its publication.
The Inside Story of the Real President Trump, by His Former Attorney and Personal Advisor-The Man Who Helped Get Him Into the Oval Office

Once Donald Trump's fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried.

This is the most devastating business and political horror…


Book cover of Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election

Gregg Barak Why I love this book

Award-winning investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman have written a larger-than-life account of the electoral corruption committed by the POTUS and his supporters to overturn the 2020 presidential election with their flagrant disregard for the rule of law and American democracy.

Employing original reporting and exclusive access to thousands of documents, emails, text messages, and a cast of more than 100 characters, Isikoff and Klaidman take the reader behind the scenes of the irreconcilable Teflon Don, his co-conspirators, and their intimidation and threats of violence directed at a range of law-abiding people from ordinary vote counters to high-ranking officials and their families to the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her staff of deputy prosecutors. 

By Michael Isikoff , Daniel Klaidman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Find Me the Votes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Find Me the Votes, two years of immersive reporting by Isikoff and Klaidman has produced the most authoritative and dramatic account yet of a defeated president's conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and how a local Georgia prosecutor-a daughter of the civil rights movement-decided to indict him and his allies for his desperate attempt to hold on to power. From the beginning, Fani Willis saw Donald Trump's crimes as a voting rights case, and an attempt by the former president to deprive the citizens of Georgia of the franchise, a right for which her forebears had bled.

Isikoff and…


Book cover of Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump

Gregg Barak Why I love this book

There is no one better than David L. Atheide when it comes to the digital ecology of mass communications and politics. From numerous vantage points including the history of politicking, presidential campaigning, and mediated manipulation, Altheide explains how Trump used digital networks to emotionally connect with MAGA America.

To promote the Big Lie, to cultivate millions of supporters, to invert social reality, and to flip-flop the dominant political narrative of “law and order.” Trump accomplished this through circulated misinformation, mass-produced disinformation, and blatant propaganda. 

By David L. Altheide ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gonzo Governance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Drawing on social science and communications theory, Gonzo Governance offers a new interpretation of presidential power that shifts focus to the media dynamics that surrounded Donald Trump. The former president's unhinged behavior and skilled media and digital manipulations changed the nature and process of significant governance at the federal and state levels, including denying election results and restricting voting opportunities. He went "Gonzo" - promoting himself without regard for conventional norms and practices - and blasted ideological fault lines into explosive political fragments, resulting in so much dissensus that numerous legislators would not recognize the newly elected President Biden, nor…


Explore my book 😀

Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy

By Gregg Barak ,

Book cover of Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy

What is my book about?

This is a sequel to Criminology on Trump in real time, continuing the criminological investigation into the former US president. Developing and expanding on the themes of family dynamics, deviance, deception, dishonesty, and the weaponization of the law, this book offers the next chapter on the world’s most successful outlaw.

In this new book, Gregg Barak considers the campaigns and policies, corruption, state-organized abuses of power and obstructions of justice, pardons, failed insurrection, prosecutions, Trump's indictment, and the politics of punishment as these revolve around the Trumpian character and social structures that encourage such crimes of the powerful. Barak also thoroughly addresses the threat to American Democracy, critiques the current state of the U.S. constitutional system, and proposes reforms to enhance justice for all in the United States. 

Book cover of The Making of Donald Trump
Book cover of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Book cover of Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

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