#John Bolton’s tell-all memoir tops 780K sales in a week

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This illustration photo taken on June 23, 2020 shows a woman reading John Bolton’s book “The Room Where it Happened” on the day of it’s release in Los Angeles.
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Former national security adviser John Bolton’s new tell-all memoir sold more than 780,000 copies in its first week on the market, publisher Simon & Schuster said Wednesday.

“The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir,” in which Bolton blasts President Trump’s handling of foreign affairs, had sparked attempts by the White House to block its publication, citing national security grounds. But publisher Simon & Schuster, which had argued Trump was simply trying to quash a book he found “unflattering,” pressed ahead and released the book on June 23.

Bolton, who served as the national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, paints a withering portrait of the president, stating at one point, “I am hard pressed to identify any single Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.”

The publisher has ordered an 11th printing that when completed will make for a million copies.