If you're still deciding what to read this week, remember the difference between books that give one person's perspective on a series of events and books that curate thousands of perspectives on a geopolitical matrix.
The former is a memoir, while the latter is a history book.
The former is a memoir, while the latter is a history book.
Different people have different tastes: some prefer memoirs, some political histories. One unfortunate thing is that media almost exclusively covers memoirs, not political histories, as it wants our eyeballs on one or two "breaking news" tidbits, not books that broadly enlighten.
I really appreciate—am honored by—folks wanting and expecting to see me all over media this week, and I feel sad when I have to say that that's just not how it works. I'm not a celebrity or newsmaker who happened to write a book—I'm an author. The rules are different for authors.
That said, no one who reads a "Proof" book and then reads a memoir says they learned more from the memoir. No one. *No one*. And that's because curatorial journalism packs 1000% more content onto each page than any memoir does or could. Because it's a different genre of writing.
There's no question you'll hear about many different books this week. And if you add up *all the content* of the five (say) you hear the most about, it'll be about half the content in Proof of Corruption. Again, just because of how the books are written and what genre they're in.
There's one thing media does right on this score, though—albeit accidentally. By reporting as "breaking news" the two or three newsworthy tidbits in celebrity memoirs, it makes it so you don't have to buy them. Then you can read the more substantive political histories, instead.
That said, I'm like anyone else: some books are wrecks you just can't avoid watching. I expect I'll be checking out Cohen's book just like anyone else. I think he's already said to Congress much of what he has to say, but he's fascinating to me—having written about him for years.
