{"id":16696,"date":"2025-09-11T06:28:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16696"},"modified":"2025-09-12T06:39:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:39:57","slug":"the-epstein-birthday-book-is-even-worse-than-you-might-realize-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16696","title":{"rendered":"“The Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might Realize”, The New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reading the two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page document from start to finish is like examining a crudely illustrated contract with the devil.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jessica Winter<\/a>, The Lede<\/a>, September 11, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Powerful Man publishing event of the season\u2014what \u201cSteve Jobs<\/a>\u201d or \u201cThe Lives of John Lennon<\/a>\u201d or \u201cIacocca<\/a>\u201d were to their respective moments\u2014is \u201cThe First Fifty Years,\u201d a set of three leather-bound tomes commissioned by Ghislaine Maxwell to celebrate the milestone birthday, in 2003, of her onetime boyfriend and, eventually, fellow convicted child-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. \u201cThe idea behind this book was simply to gather stories and old photographs to jog your memory about places people and different events,\u201d Maxwell writes in the prologue. Her pen swoops and dives, like a ravenous moray eel. She seems so pleased with herself, for what\u2019s about to unfold. And what a team she\u2019s put together: the business executive Leslie Wexner, the private-equity investor Leon Black, the venture capitalist William Elkus, the Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, and Alan Dershowitz<\/a>\u2014among many other friends and associates\u2014are all named as contributors, gathered here in honor of the birthday boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have likely heard about the Presidential submissions to this anthology, which the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform obtained from Epstein\u2019s estate and released<\/a> to the public this week. A vapid, near-illegible note attributed to Bill Clinton salutes \u201call the years of learning and knowing\u201d that Epstein has logged, and praises his \u201cchildlike curiosity\u201d and his \u201cdrive to make a difference.\u201d The entry attributed to and apparently signed by Donald Trump invents an innuendo-heavy conversation between himself and Epstein, who was later revealed to be a serial rapist of girls as young as fourteen. Surely taking inspiration from the concrete poems of John Hollander or perhaps James Merrill\u2019s \u201cChristmas Tree<\/a>,\u201d the author fits the lines of dialogue inside a female silhouette, adding pen strokes that represent breast buds. He alludes to a shared love of secrets. Epstein, Trump once observed, likes women \u201con the younger side.\u201d (The White House has denied that Trump contributed the drawing or signed it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second Trump Administration has been dogged by a somewhat amnesiac fixation on the President\u2019s long-established ties to Epstein, whom Trump once described as \u201ca lot of fun to be with,\u201d and who died in a jail cell under bizarre circumstances during Trump\u2019s first term, in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. This summer, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, reversed her promises to release new investigative files related to Epstein. Maxwell, who is appealing her conviction and seeking a pardon, met for two long sessions with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as part of what my colleague Ruth Marcus called<\/a> a \u201cdamage-control operation.\u201d (As ABC News put it<\/a>, \u201cIt is almost unheard of for a convicted sex trafficker to meet with such a high-ranking Justice Department official, especially one who used to be the president\u2019s top criminal defense attorney.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s therefore understandable why most of the media response to \u201cThe First Fifty Years\u201d has focussed on a couple of pages of Trump-related content. But this framing may actually undersell the book\u2019s hideous, maggot-crawling depravity. Reading it from start to finish\u2014there are two hundred and thirty-eight pages, with redactions throughout, in the PDF that the House committee released\u2014is to immiserate oneself in a uniquely cheap and idiotic genre of degeneracy. Sometimes it\u2019s like you\u2019re leafing through the visitors\u2019 book at the Museum of Carcosa<\/a>. Sometimes it reads like a catalogue raisonn\u00e9 of outsider art by registered sex offenders. Sometimes it\u2019s like you\u2019ve stumbled into the masked ball in \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d and everyone is wearing Shein, and smells like Burger King, and there\u2019s that tacky gold shit that Trump likes all over the walls. Sometimes it\u2019s like you\u2019ve discovered a rich man\u2019s contract with the devil, and, next to his signature, he\u2019s drawn a little penis cartoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Epstein\u2019s air of mystery is a refrain among the admirers who made contributions to his birthday book. He has both a \u201cMona Lisa smile\u201d and a \u201cCheshire cat grin\u201d; he is \u201calways grinning\u201d like a \u201cmischievous lad\u201d; his friends \u201cthink he works for the CIA.\u201d (Maybe?) He is surrounded at all times by gorgeous babes. He \u201ccan create them out of thin air,\u201d one pal writes. The section \u201cGirl Friends\u201d includes two pages of densely collaged snapshots of young women, predominantly in bathing suits or lingerie, all with their faces blacked out. The \u201cAssistants\u201d section reads as if someone asked a prospective employer for a job description and was given a millennial issue of Maxim<\/em>: skimpy-bikini shots, butt shots, and a blacked-out horizontal shot with a caption asking, \u201cWho Am I???\u201d A photo of a couple taken from behind\u2014the man\u2019s hand is pushed deep into the waistband of the woman\u2019s jeans\u2014is captioned \u201cThank You!!!\u201d Another grateful former employee lists the men of wealth and taste whom she has met through her work with Epstein: Clinton, Trump, Prince Andrew, the Sultan of Brunei, Kevin Spacey, Michael Jackson, and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Epstein of the birthday book is charming and suave but also menacing. He looms. A slim young woman in a thong turns toward the camera: \u201cVisiting you down in Palm Beach . . . Can\u2019t get a second of privacy with you and a camera around Ha! Ha!\u201d He augurs violence; he must be placated. A friend imagines threatening girls at knifepoint to strip off their bathing suits. In another snapshot, Epstein is masked and holding what appears to be a gun; the caption refers to a \u201cfirst victim\u201d who will \u201cbe attacked and brutally plundered.\u201d Everyone surrenders to him. It\u2019s wonderful and terrible. \u201cYou\u2019re my kid\u2019s role model,\u201d one friend tells Epstein, adding that when he and a mutual friend \u201cget together, who and what do you think we talk about ? You, You, You, You, its constant\u2014I can\u2019t stand it anymore.\u201d That was twenty-two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unknown what instructions Maxwell gave her contributors, but the book privileges a bespoke intimacy, a singular kind of personal touch\u2014handwritten, hand-drawn, and unrelentingly venereal. A before-and-after diptych in bright colors shows Epstein approaching some little girls with balloons and a lollipop; two decades later, he is reclining on a beach, receiving massages from four blondes in bikini bottoms, one of whom has his initials tattooed on her ass, in front of a building not unlike Mar-a-Lago. Some of the tributes, with their patchy syntax and crooked chirography, evoke a semi-coerced confession of sins, as if MK-ULTRA had infiltrated the fraternity in \u201cAnimal House.\u201d A fragment titled \u201cCastaways Vol. I\u201d reads, \u201cI was Porking Some girl in Bed + Jeff Brings in the maid to make Bed She Left screming + never came Back.\u201d Or: \u201cJeff would call the house Rabbis voice + say this is [redacted\u2019s] father. I would Bring her up to your mothers house + make her take her top off so we could touch her boobs.\u201d Many cults gain hold over their members by eliciting and recording their most closely held secrets. The birthday book is cultish in this way, and in its tautological reverence for a strange and twisted man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps there are things that are best understood in terms of demonic force. And perhaps it is no wonder why every American is now a conspiracy theorist. Some of the richest and most influential men on the planet\u2014billionaires and leaders of the known world\u2014helped out with Maxwell\u2019s book, which includes a section titled \u201cCHILDREN.\u201d It appears to have four entries (and is significantly redacted). One kid contributed what amounts to an extended poop joke. There\u2019s a colorful drawing of sad-faced little girls out of a Henry Darger nightmare, with accompanying text that reads, \u201chere comes the bride all dressed in whit were is the grom he\u2019s in the lady\u2019s room.\u201d There\u2019s a photo of a toddler-age child holding a stuffed toy. And there\u2019s a group of photos of what appears to be a prepubescent girl. She wears a camisole and matching pajama bottoms; in one of the images, her top rides above her belly and she puts a hand on a jutted hip. The lead caption, in handwriting that resembles Maxwell\u2019s, is, simply, \u201cA new series of pictures.\u201d \u2666<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Winter<\/a> joined The New Yorker as an editor in 2017 and became a staff writer in 2024, covering family and education. She is the author of the novels \u201c<\/em>Break in Case of Emergency<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<\/em>The Fourth Child<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading the two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page document from start to finish is like examining a crudely illustrated contract with the devil. By Jessica Winter, The Lede, September 11, 2025 The Powerful Man publishing event of the season\u2014what \u201cSteve Jobs\u201d or \u201cThe Lives of John Lennon\u201d or \u201cIacocca\u201d were to their respective moments\u2014is \u201cThe First Fifty Years,\u201d a set of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16698,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696\/revisions\/16698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}