Carolyn Walsh 's Reviews > Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age

This is a difficult book to rate and review. There is no doubt that famed actor, John Lithgow, is a brilliant satirist as proven in his biting rhymes. The line drawings added as illustrations are funny and compelling. However, he laments that the time between events and publication lags four months behind what is happening in real-time. There is still much to make one laugh out loud or cringe. However, some of Lithgow's targets who worked for Trump or blindly supported him have already been forgotten, assigned to prison or oblivion.

The day after he sent this book to the publisher was the day all hell erupted in Lafayette Square near the White House. Peaceful protesters were cleared from the square by the president's quickly assembled federal, state and local law enforcement officers using flash grenades, rubber bullets, etc. Immediately after, the president strutted out to hold a Bible, carried in his daughter's $1540 handbag, brandishing it in front of a Church with a grin of triumph on his face. Lithgow viewed this as a missed opportunity for this book and considered the event crass and ridiculous. He regrets that from the time he completes his verses and when the readers see them, so much of history has gone unaddressed.

So much demagoguery, assault on voting and the democratic process, and attacks on truth and the legitimate press have been witnessed with alarm and will surely be addressed in the next book. I cant wait to see how he satirizes this more current news after the Trump era comes to an end- if that ever happens. Since much of the legitimate news reports already sound like a farce, there will be much for several new volumes of satire.