Structure

The book begins with a Prologue, in which author Lewis outlines how people running the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump began the process of preparing a transition of operations between the outgoing administration of then-president Barack Obama. The Prologue ends with the story of how the first chair of the transition team, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, was fired, and how nervous one of Trump’s key advisors became about the transition as a result.

The rest of the book, its main narrative body, is divided into three parts. Part 1 focuses on the post-election transition experiences of the Department of Energy (DOE), while Part 2 focuses on the same-circumstance experiences of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Part 3 then focuses on the same-circumstance experiences of the Department of Commerce, paying particular attention to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Each of the book’s...