With their latest book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Australian-American Jonathan Swan have written an “inside-the-beltway” account, as they say in Washington, for political nerds and Trump obsessives. It covers in intricate detail the first year of Trump’s second term in office. And, as one would expect from two journalists of their calibre, it is scrupulously researched and thoroughly sourced. Up front the two authors announce that they conducted “more than a thousand interviews with a wide range of people close to President Trump”. These interviews were carried out “on the journalistic ground rule of deep background”. This is an arrangement whereby a source gives out information on the basis that it will not be attributed to them. And it is this sourcing of interviewees, in particular from the intimate group of Trump’s most trusted and loyal buddies, that will fascinate journalists and the political cognoscenti. How on earth did the authors get such stunning access to the inner circles of his government, friends and associates? The book is stuffed to the gills with Trump’s denigrating and indiscreet one-liners about world leaders and political opponents. It also contains what it calls “detailed scenes in sensitive locations” and some of the dialogue is in direct quotes, so one can only conclude that it was the very people inside the room who were leaking.For example, in the meeting that planned “Operation Epic Fury”, the ongoing US military operation against Iran which began on February 28, the book recounts that the group “had been kept so tight that two key officials who would need to manage the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright – were still not in the loop, one day before the launch of the war. Nor was the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard”. So who was there? Vice-president J.D. Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, CIA director John Ratcliffe, White House counsel David Warrington, communications director Steven Cheung, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine, secretary of war Pete Hegseth and secretary of state Marco Rubio. So if there were, as Haberman and Swan note, “no presentations” and “no paperwork”, presumably one of these top officials must have blabbed.The only two people quoted directly in this instance were Trump and Ratcliffe, the CIA director. According to the authors’ notes on sources at the start of the book, direct quotes come “either from the person speaking them, someone who heard them directly, or from contemporaneous notes, recordings or transcripts”. This question will excite the political sleuths out there – not to mention White House staff. As the celebrated Anglo-American journalist Tina Brown notes in her “Fresh Hell” Substack review, at the very least, “it’s an interesting parlour game”.The 464-page book is a comprehensive look at Trump’s first year, but it’s not a rollicking page turner. The details in certain chapters will only interest readers engrossed by that particular topic’s minutiae. Broadly it is broken up into four parts, and the titles tell the tale: Whirlwind; Retribution; The Enemy Within and Plunder.Thin skinTrump’s narcissism jumps off the page. In a chat with the authors published in the epilogue, he happily quotes “a historian” as saying: “Donald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known – by a long way”. And that: “If President Trump is the American Eagle, then William the Conqueror was merely a sparrow.” On checking the source, the authors discover that the “historian” was South African golfer Gary Player’s former caddie.The book finds plenty of evidence of the president’s thin skin suggesting he will go to any lengths to wreak revenge on those he sees as having wronged him, particularly over what he still insists on calling the “stolen election” of 2020. The authors note that “retribution – against critics, prosecutors, investigators, journalists, and even late-night talk hosts – was always at the top of Trump’s second-term agenda.”There are few public figures prepared to stand up to him. One quiet hero of the book is the chairman of the federal reserve Jerome Powell. Trump was frustrated that he couldn’t seize control of interest rates, but Powell did not buckle even though Trump tried myriad ways to have him prosecuted. In desperation Trump settled on the renovation of the organisation’s HQ in Washington. His language concerning Powell, according to the book, is shockingly intemperate: “I want to bust his fucking balls, honestly,” Trump said of Powell. “What about that fucking building? Can we stop it? Can we stop construction? I just want to bust his fucking balls. Fuck him”. One is left asking again – who squealed on this particular story?On the recordThe book represents the best of factual political reporting and will be read in the future as an invaluable historical record of the Trump government. Sprinkled throughout its pages are behind the scenes campaigns to try to snap shut the Epstein Files, and round up illegal migrants (and ordinary Americans) via Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There are tasteless anecdotes such as when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave Trump a gold-plated pager, to commemorate an Israeli operation to blow up Hezbollah members. The pagers and walkie-talkies killed 37 people including children and injured many more.But there’s one area that the authors didn’t succeed in penetrating, as underlined by Martin Pengelly in The Guardian, and that concerns Trump’s health. Here it seems nobody is prepared to spill the beans from either the regime or the health services. His tendency to fall asleep and slur his words is beginning to mirror the behaviour of Joe Biden in his final year in office. It is surprising that as journalists the pair has not investigated more of Trump’s attacks on the press. They do summarise his lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, and his fights with CBS and the New York Times, but there is only passing reference to his appalling treatment of journalists – in particular women reporters. The breakup of the Elon Musk bromance is also covered only scantily, when one would have expected more in-depth reporting. Inevitably one is left to ponder if Musk could have been one of the early whistleblowers, or perhaps even conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson, another former insider with whom the US president appears to have had an epic falling out. I don’t suppose Trump will want to pop this tome on the shelves of his presidential library. But when he finishes investigating the leaks, whose heads will roll?This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.Colleen Murrell has received funding in the past from Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán for the Reuters Digital News Report Ireland (2021-4). She is a pro bono chair of The Conversation's UK editorial board.