496 pp. June 23, 2026, Simon & Schuster. Non-fiction.
Hubris.
One cannot read this account of Trump’s second term (so far) without feeling wholly aghast at the sheer hubris of the man, born of a toxic combination of his self-belief and his delusions of persecution. But Trump does say something revealing and difficult to argue with, quoted at the end of the book: “They illegally indicted me, they impeached me, they did everything—they shot me, I guess you could say. But I won the election in a landslide. Nobody else could’ve done it […] And there’s only one thing you can say about me that anybody believes, and you know what that is. […] Essentially I won every f—ing time.”
Not many could sift through the bewildering morass of detail—stories, news, court cases, scandals, outright lies, trolling, rumour, confusion—produced by the Trump administration, and the associated, astonishing rise of his MAGA movement, to pull off such a compelling and gripping narrative—but Haberman and Swan have done it. As leak-proof as this White House has attempted to be, Haberman and Swan seem to have cultivated impeccable contacts. Regime Change, a contender for the best non-fiction book you’ll read this year, is full of incredibly rich detail, from Trump’s alleged encouragement of a rivalry between Vance and Rubio, his belligerent and sustained assaults on anyone who has ever crossed him, or Maduro’s “extraction” from Venezuela, to the tariff debacle, calls between Netanyahu and Trump and his visits to the White House, and the build-up to the latest war on Iran. Other details too, that leave one bemused—like Trump wielding superglue to affix gold decorations above the mantel in the Oval Office.
Africans often joke that Trump’s an African president—and the reason for this impression of him is explained towards the end of this book: He’s been fearless, particularly in his second term, about ignoring systems and conventions underlying the so-called rules-based international order. And there’ve been no personal consequences, kind of justifying him. If these methods of Trump’s worked for him domestically in his first term, they appear to have succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams internationally in his second term. What all this implies for the future of the US—and the world, should the rest of us continue to depend on US power—is beyond alarming; but the conclusion cannot be avoided: the old world has died, and a new one has arrived.
Maybe there will indeed be monuments to Donald Trump; still, what a student of human history might imagine is two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desert.
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A version of this review appeared in The Sunday Long Read, June 28, 2026:
Harare Review of Books 
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