Biteback Publishing has acquired Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID by Nicholas Enrich.
When Enrich achieved his lifelong dream of leading USAID’s global health programmes, he expected to be helping to save lives around the world. Instead, he found himself at the centre of an unprecedented assault on one of the US’s most effective humanitarian institutions.
Revealing and deeply personal, Into the Wood Chipper is an urgent intervention into one of the US’s most devastating modern crises. At once a story of conscience under pressure and the cost of speaking out, it offers a gripping first-hand account of the fight to protect millions of lives around the world.
UK and Commonwealth English language rights were acquired by Biteback’s commissioning editor, Melanie Scagliarini, from Anna Boyce and Felicity Rubinstein of Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency.
Scagliarini said, “I am thrilled to bring this book to UK readers. The dismantling of USAID sent shockwaves around the world and cuts to UK development spending have only deepened the global humanitarian crisis. Enrich’s compelling reporting takes readers through the decisions behind the destruction, showing how a handful of impactful choices can devastate lives, dismantle institutions and reshape the world far beyond Washington. Urgent, revelatory and deeply human, Into the Wood Chipper is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the profound consequences that can follow when decisions affecting many are placed in the hands of a powerful few.”
Enrich said, “I never set out to be an author, but this story of incompetence, indifference and cruelty as Elon Musk and the Trump administration destroyed one of America’s best ideas needed to be told. However bad you might imagine it was inside Trump’s government, I’m here to show you that it was far worse.”
Nicholas Enrich is a former civil servant who worked at USAID under four administrations. He served as the director of policy, programmes and planning at the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy until January 2025, when he became USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health. In March 2025, he was placed on administrative leave for exposing the Trump administration’s illegitimate and dangerous dismantling of USAID and was removed from federal service later that year.
Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID will be published on 11 February 2027, supported by a major marketing and publicity campaign.
Price: £20 hardback
ISBN: 9781837361021
For more information, please contact Kate Cunnington on kate.cunnington@bitebackpublishing.com