The Clearest Account Yet of How Trump’s Team Botched the Pandemic

The U.S. response to the pandemic has already spawned a range of speedily published books. A few notable examples have come from masters of journalistic narrative, including Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright; former officials, such as Scott Gottlieb and Andy Slavitt; and newspaper reporters, especially Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. But the most significant entry so far, the book that should be an indispensable resource for future historians, is Silent Invasion by Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump.

Birx’s book has received relatively little attention in the two weeks since it was published—it still has not been reviewed by or the , for instance, or sparked nearly as much chatter as that was also just released. Much of the attention that has been paid to Birx has focused , but on , who witnessed and