... a meticulous deep dive into all things Trump and Kushner. A veteran investigative reporter with WNYC radio, NPR’s New York affiliate, Bernstein brings a keen eye for financial flimflam and the tectonics that buffet American politics ... the book is laden with original reporting and primary sources ... At times, Bernstein’s sentiments color her indictment ... Bernstein also does justice to Trump’s investments, his brushes with the law and the near-prosecution of his children by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr. On that score, American Oligarchs picks up where Bernstein’s earlier reporting left off.

... ambitious ... Bernstein at her narrative best [is] reportorial, pointed and unsparing, while reinforcing her theme that the Trumps and the Kushners are ruthless, cold, power hungry and endlessly ambitious ... But it is also true that Bernstein has picked a most difficult topic to probe for new insights. So much has been written already about the Trumps and the Kushners — and not just in the four-plus years since Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower spewing vitriol and hate — that to add new material to that grotesque canon is an exceptionally challenging task for any reporter, even one as diligent as Bernstein. While American Oligarchs is a rich and highly readable compendium, one does not finish it and think, 'I’ve just been bedazzled and infuriated anew.' Rather, the experience of consuming this book is more along the lines of reading an encyclopedia of many of the hateful things we already know, or think we know, about these two families ... I, for one, would have loved a far more detailed and anecdote-filled treatment of the Christie-Kushner feud, among others, than the one Bernstein provides.

There are now dozens, perhaps scores, of Trump-inspired and Trump-infused books on the market. Most are screeds, tales of scandal and infidelity, with tax evasion and crudity mixed in. They comprise a modern genre. American Oligarchs occupies this space, to be sure, but Bernstein’s account is written with more grace than its cousins, and more care — sometimes even caution ... Early in Bernstein’s tale we encounter the modern origins of the Kushners, their Polish shtetl roots and the slaughter of many of them at the hands of the Nazis. It is an affecting, poignant story, told well and without the facile irony — struggling family in merciless mid-century war turns into crooked family in late-century New Jersey —that a less accomplished writer might employ ... Bernstein displays deep understanding of these two families, and how the progeny had social status the parents lacked but coveted ... The irony of books like this one — and books defending the president, even the one by his own son — is that they reinforce views rather than reshape them. Then again, that is what contemporary media, and contemporary conversation, do every day. In the end, American Oligarchs is the American conversation in hardcover.

Trump may be the answer to the past 40 years of political history, but perhaps not in the sense Bernstein describes. For starters, his electoral victory was not a product of unmatched amounts of money: He was outspent by several of his primary opponents (until they withdrew), and he trailed Hillary Clinton badly in both campaign fundraising and external spending ... The replacement of the last decade’s oligarchs by the Trump-Kushner oligarchy is less the natural conclusion to our political drama than a surprise twist in the final act. Trump was clearly not the choice of the business elites who thought they ran the Republican Party and the country. Instead, he is a product of the Faustian bargains that the Republican establishment made along the way.

Unlike many other mainstream journalists, Bernstein, who has been digging into the Trump and Kushner family businesses for years, never hesitates to label Donald Trump a liar, a perjurer, and a felon who has escaped imprisonment for his numerous business crimes ... Already well known before this book was the criminal conviction of Jared Kushner’s father for business fraud, but Bernstein provides useful added detail regarding the Kushners’ many misdeeds. She also sticks to the facts and avoids partisan politics ... necessarily hard-hitting ... The author, who conducted hundreds of interviews and read more than 100,000 documents to create this damning portrait of two clearly unscrupulous families, credits investigative journalists before her, especially Wayne Barrett, whose 1992 Trump biography exposed his decades of nefarious business and personal dealings ... A painstaking documentation of a relentless culture of corruption.

Bernstein debuts with a fine-grained dual biography chronicling the parallel trajectories of the Kushner and Trump families and the concurrent social and political trends that made their rise to power possible ... Bernstein occasionally tips over the line between snark and sincerity (particularly when it comes to Jared Kushner’s elocution), but by and large she delivers a tough yet fair-minded analysis of how both families embody the dangers wealth and influence pose to American democracy. Progressives will be equal parts horrified and fascinated by this rigorous account.